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<< Back to Ireland's Literary Revival Page A Journy into Ireland's Literary
Revival
Reviews
A person perusing the careers of the Revival’s stars for the first time might find it easy to accuse some of “slumming” for a bit of reality entertainment. Surrounded by the struggling multitudes while enjoying the luxury of their leisure, it used to strike me as odd that their cause celebre would be all things Irish. However, Felton’s sure pen, big-picture narrative and succinct biographies broadcast the Revivalists’ true love for Eire. Many of them had enjoyed country childhoods where they learned of ancient traditions driven underground by churches, invaders and governments. The group’s support for the native language, along with its efforts to document Celtic heritage in the natural world, shouldered a startling activism in aiding and abetting a culture that their class spent so much time suppressing. Additionally, the author suggests that “perhaps only in Ireland would such a revolution as the Easter Rising, a brief and ill-fated effort to overthrow British rule, be fought by so many writers.” Literary Revivalists and patriots Padraig Pearse and Thomas MacDonagh were both poets, and MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Willie Pearse, and Padraic O’Connor were involved in Edward Martyn’s Hardwicke Street Theatre. Lady Augusta Gregory and W. B. Yeats organized the Irish National Theatre Society in 1890s’ Galway and helped open Dublin’s famous Abbey Theatre in 1904. At first glance they would seem miscast as revolutionaries, but faith and fortunes notwithstanding, their Society featured performances championing common folks and political rebels. By 1911 the shows were on the road in America with luminaries like Franklin Roosevelt and Eugene O’Neill in attendance. Many traditional Irish tunes and folk songs became mainstream entertainment during the Revival. Old ballads and airs, popularized in the “Gay Nineties,” were standard fare for many of our grandparents and great-grandparents. A cursory look through any turn-of-the-century songbooks will reveal not only treasured ancient work, but also songs by Thomas Moore, George M. Cohan, Chauncey Olcott, Percy French, Seamus O’Farrell, John Francis Waller, William Rooney, and Patrick J. McCall. John Millington Synge’s studies on the Aran Islands inspired his famous, riot-inciting dramatic comedy, “The Playboy of the Western World.” By bringing genuine Irish idiom to public attention, Aran Island stories banished the sorry stuff of stereotypical, oafish “stage Irish” characterizations. A Wicklow man, Synge was a solitary soul who relished his privacy under cloudy, windy skies swirling above the Islands just 30 miles out from Galway’s glimmering lights. Revered as “the last three islands of the European continent” with their pure Gaelic culture, the Aran Islands were home to natives disgusted with civil authorities and laws, as noted in Synge’s play. The author observes that “the local population in the play is drunk, on its way to getting drunk, nervous, spineless, or deformed in some way. The local heroes, or at least people who have done deeds worth noticing, are the criminals.” Lady Gregory traveled to the Islands to study folklore, and Yeats, Martyn, Moore and Symons also came for stories. Felton is a font of delightful anecdotes concerning these Revivalists, one noting that Irish poet Seamus Heaney purchased a former Synge residence in County Wicklow. This absorbing book is also a splendid travel guide. Photographs (past and current) of the Aran Islands, Galway, Sligo, Maya and Dublin tempt with an armchair tour. Felton pulls together an irresistible road trip that included Thoor Ballylee, Yeats’s country home in Galway with its 14th- century tower blessed by the presence of the renowned bard Raftery who sheltered there in the early 19th century. In 1961 the Irish Tourist Board funded its restoration and established a museum that opened in 1965. Lady Gregory’s Coole Park estate, now run by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, is not to be missed, and Galway City’s art scene boasts numerous festivals, programs and theatre companies. Sligo, Yeats’s childhood home, hosts a Summer School with tours of the author’s old haunts. Elected to the Irish Free State Senate, Yeats received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. Big county Mayo with its mountains, fields and bogs was home to George Moore, Catholic landowner and writer of “The Untilled Field,” a short story collection of Irish rural life. Moore Hall, his home place near Lough Carra, burned during the Civil War and stands in ruins today. Felton relates that “Moore brought dignity and emotional complexity to the study of Irish rural life even as Joyce subsequently was to bring them to the study of the Dublin poor.” The National Museum of Country Life in Castlebar near Moore Hall is one of Mayo’s historical jewels. Early 20th-century Dublin was a battleground of contradictions—largely Catholic but controlled by Protestants, boasting beautiful buildings but, according to Felton, “home to some of the worst poverty in the world...arguably, as bad as that of Calcutta.” Today’s Dublin and its greater metropolitan area would seem a wonderland to the Revivalists, though they would still be able to trace their old trails around much of the interior. The section on the contemporary city discusses particulars concerning the Dublin Writers Museum and the Literary Pub Crawl, as well as historic landmarks. A Journey Into Ireland’s Literary
Revival leaves readers, especially Americans accustomed to
wide open spaces, with a firm impression of how geographically close
things are in a small country, how much everyone walked in the early
20th century, and how intertwined so many relationships were, regardless
of class and creed. Above all, R. Todd Felton explores the Revivalists’
versatility as courageous, hands-on philanthropic change agents
gone native. Soaring beyond noblesse oblige, with some severing
significant bonds with their own comfortable ancestries, these heroes
scored both sublime and practical triumphs. Felton takes the authentically Irish literature
of writers such as W. B. Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory and Sean O'Casey
and uses it as a tool for exploration. This historic literary travelogue
takes readers to places like Galway, Mayo, Sligo and Dublin. And
along the way makes visits to the cottages, castles, theaters and
pubs where some of the country's finest writers shaped a vision
of Ireland. This is a nice series for armchair travelers looking
to bypass logistical details, and a perfect fit for literary fans
who wish to see the country from a cultural perspective. The book is quite beautiful—filled
with both color and black and white photos. One of the lovely aspects
of these books is that they take you to a place and then give you
information about exactly who would have been standing (in another
era) right where you stand today. It tells you what they would have
been dong, seeing, wearing, and maybe even thinking. There is something
almost magical about how this series of books “takes“
you to these places. If you never go to Ireland you will still want
to read this book. It is lovely and lyrical. And if you want to
go there, then you must read this book. It will make your trip enchanted
and poetic. If Ireland were a state in the USA, it would rank 40th in size, just ahead of South Carolina. And yet the Emerald Isle has produces four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: WB Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), Samuel Beckett (1969) and Seamus Heaney (1995). In addition, it also produced arguably the greatest writer not to have won the Nobel Prize: James Joyce. In his book A Journey into Ireland’s Literary Revival (Roaring Forties Press), author and photographer R. Todd Felton journeys through Ireland himself in search of the people and places the contributed to a huge creative upsurge in Irish writing from roughly the 1890s to the 1920s. It was a period when people including WB Yeats, JM Synge, George Bernard Shaw and Sean O’Casey were writing. James Joyce too, though the author only mentions Joyce in passing, as he was never one for movements and spent much of his life in exile from Ireland. Felton has quite a way with words himself, and a relaxed style that brings the past alive. This is no dusty literary history, but an accessible account of a trip through Ireland, visiting the places that matter: County Galway, the Aran Islands, County Mayo, Sligo, County Wicklow and of course Dublin. The author has a nice, anecdotal style, and an ability to make the important historical events real. You feel you’re there as they happen, not merely reading a dry historical account. I especially liked the long section on Thoor Ballylee, Yeats’s famous tower which inspired him so much, and which again Todd Felton brings vividly to life. As he does the Aran Islands, with their haunting beauty and remoteness. Yeats visited the Aran Islands, although they are most famously associated with the playwright JM Synge, and portrayed in his drama The Playboy of the Western World. It’s a delight to read about places such as the Aran Islands, Sligo and County Wicklow, whose atmosphere (past and present) is caught well by the author. It’s not only because he has visited but also because he sees them through the eyes of the authors he’s writing about, sees how the landscapes and cityscapes influenced them. He understands them better because of it. A Journey into Ireland’s Literary Revival
is no guidebook. The only practical information is by way of maps,
showing where all the significant places mentioned in the text can
be found. And very good they are too. As are the author’s
own photographs, which combine with historical photos, drawings
and newspaper archives to provide this comprehensive yet accessible
look at a period when Irish literature flourished—and because
of which it continues to thrive, down all the years. 1053 Santa Fe Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94706 • info@roaringfortiespress.com • 510-527-5461 Copyright © 2008 Roaring Forties Press. All rights reserved.
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R.
Todd Felton’s latest book, Walking Boston (Wilderness
Press), is due out this summer. In January, an online guide to Boston
that he wrote was published by National Geographic Traveler
as part of its Places of a Lifetime Series. His profile of Buffalo
will appear in an upcoming print version of National Geographic
Traveler. On July 13, Todd (also author of the ArtPlace book