The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland

by R.F. Foster

Roy Foster is one of the leaders of the iconoclastic generation of Irish historians. In this opinionated, entertaining book he examines how the Irish have written, understood, used, and misused their history over the past century.

Foster argues that, over the centuries, Irish experience itself has been turned into story. He examines how and why the key moments of Ireland's past--the 1798 Rising, the Famine, the Celtic Revival, Easter 1916, the Troubles--have been worked into narratives, drawing on Ireland's powerful oral culture, on elements of myth, folklore, ghost stories and romance. The result of this constant reinterpretation is a shifting "Story of Ireland," complete with plot, drama, suspense, and revelation.

Varied, surprising, and funny, the interlinked essays in The Irish Story examine the stories that people tell each other in Ireland and why. Foster provides an unsparing view of the way Irish history is manipulated for political ends and that Irish misfortunes are sentimentalized and packaged. He offers incisive readings of writers from Standish O'Grady to Trollope and Bowen; dissects the Irish government's commemoration of the 1798 uprising; and bitingly critiques the memoirs of Gerry Adams and Frank McCourt. Fittingly, as the acclaimed biographer of Yeats, Foster explores the poet's complex understanding of the Irish story--"the mystery play of devils and angels which we call our national history"--and warns of the dangers of turning Ireland into a historical theme park.

The Irish Story will be hailed by some, attacked by others, but for all who care about Irish history and literature, it will be essential reading.

Genres: Ireland, History, Nonfiction, Academic

304 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1990

About the author

Robert Fitzroy Foster, PhD, FBA, FRHistS, FRSL

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aaagh! The Irish! Ireland...a country of saints & scholars?...well...this study of Irish history is that of a scholar...R.L.Foster draws attention to the fairy-tale nature of Irish history in a quite brilliant way. The Irish are indisputably a gifted literary nation...using a foreign tongue, English, with admirable skill & artistry...when telling tall tales or sounding-off to a harper's accompaniement in a flight of fantasy about leprechauns & banshees...& the evil Saxons!...but far less reliable when dealing with cold, hard reality. This is, or should be, a cause for concern to all true gaels...whoever they are meant to be! Historical study & debate in Ireland has been used, often gratuitously, to enflame, radicalise, rabble-rouse & poison; the verifiable truth is quickly dissolved into a dangerous brew of distortions, lies, evasions, inventions & polemics...propaganda, if you like!...which serves no masters but the men of violence who have always been Irish heroes rather than the more pragmatic & realistic men & women who can honestly acknowledge that a country's history must never be twisted into narratives that feed the hunger for the unattainable & illusory. Ireland is what it is; a small, insignificant island off the west coast of England. Any other assessment is blarney! A painful thorn in England's side perhaps but in the great panoply of world history, an irritating pimple with delusions of being a festering boil! Never underestimate the power of the written word over the vapourings of Irish nationalists, drunk on potcheen, contemplating another black, rainy cloud sweeping in from the mighty Atlantic to help drown their sorrows! Now where's that fiddle & bodhrun?!
A brilliant survey in separate long essays on almost forgotten figures, full of scepticism about Ireland's distant past...but sounding an encouraging note for the future: Do not define your future by a hazy notion of the past. Learn from the mistakes...go forward...prosper...

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a couple redeeming essays here, but this is literary criticism, which is challenging for the general reader at the best of times. I learned a great deal about current issues in Irish letters and memory-making, but I’m an academic and I had to wade through a disparate selection of essays that presume a tight body of knowledge and community of scholarship. Not for the general reader wanting to learn about Irish history, literature or current events. Still, the issue of memory and commemoration and how we choose our heroes and native sons/daughters is an important one and I hope someone writes and accessible book on that subject for Ireland someday.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took a long time reading this one, and not because of lack of interest - it was just a very intensive and intellectual look at various aspects of they way the history of Ireland is narrated, told, and packaged, with a decidedly literary bent. It's a good book to pick up every once in a while and focus on an individual essay, though it does assume a certain level of familiarity with major events and players in Irish history. Not rip-roaringly funny as advertised on the front, but a decent read nonetheless.

[Peter McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The famous essay about Angela’s Ashes and Gerry Adams deserves its reputation and justifies the book’s entry price by itself. The rest of the volume might be entertaining to someone who is less familiar with (and jaded about) the ‘revisionist’ debates than I am; but at the highest-stakes moments in his arguments, Foster creeps right up to the line between opinionated (good for popular and introductory writing) to tendentious (very bad for those same types of writing). The four essays focussed on Yeats entirely escape this, thanks to Foster’s incredibly deep familiarity with the material; but that same material is treated in more depth in his biography of the poet, which I had just finished reading, so (again) I just wasn’t the right audience. Still, I repeat that the Angela’s Ashes piece really is excellent.

[William Pike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roy Foster is a so-called ‘revisionist’ Irish historian, often challenging the fixed official narrative of Irish history. These essays look at different facets of Irish history, often through a Protestant prism (WB Yeats, Hubert Butler, Elizabeth Bowen, etc.). Perhaps the best example of the changing Irish story is the final chapter on the centenary commemorations of the 1798 uprising which contrasts the 1898 commemoration ( emphasising Catholic/national liberation) with 1998 ( emphasising the United Irishmen as forerunners of the secular liberal European project). Brilliant, revealing, well worth reading if you are interested in Ireland.

[Ray Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading the wonderful WB Yeats biography, I tracked down this somewhat bland R F Foster book. Foster had covered most of the Yeats material in the bio, and other mentioned author commentary created lttle interest. Not much humor either. The Yeats bio had plenty.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having recently read Foster's lengthy history of modern Ireland, this was a bit of a denouement, but an engaging and instructive one nonetheless. His target here is what he refers to as "Theme Park History", or what we in the States might refer to as the "Disneyizing of Experience"; i.e., the tendency to tell history in a way and including only those details (or distortions thereof) that are edifying to the teller. The irony and the difficulty in this is being able to retain one's credibility as an "unmasker" of the carnival barker's techniques without being suspected of simply trying to lure customers to another side-show that promises more authenticity but delivers just another walk through a distorting fun house. As a scholar Foster does the reader and any potential critics the courtesy of citing his sources extensively (a page of notes for every eight or so pages of text proper) and his choice of icons is not as predictable as one might expect (oh, of course there are chapters on Yeats, but I wasn't expecting to see Trollope, or McCourt, or Gerry Adams). In the end though, I am left wondering if the Irish are really more prone toward the Blarneyfication of history than other nations or ethnicities (surely Foster knows better than most that Irish history is a most contested domain), or whether it is the fact that the frequent target of Irish ire is another nation whose penchant for seeing itself in rosy hues as the benefactor of humanity has few rivals that makes the Irish inviting targets for the skewerers of puffery.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

R. F. Foster is a noted historian of Ireland and in this book, he examines and dismantles the often one-sided stories of Irish history, particularly the Republican era. For someone who knows little of Irish history, however, the book can be challenging, and one would need to read more about the subjects Foster discusses in order to better appreciate his work. Also, at times the book is heavy-going with a focus on W. B. Yeats, though since Foster is a biographer of him, then the latter can be excused.

[Greg Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag of essays on Irish history and the Irish sense of nationhood, the best being those on the literature of Gerry Adams and Frank McCourt (the father of the misery memoir).

[Neil Kenealy · Rating 5 out of 5]

2nd time reading this and I upped my number of stars. Highlights are the commemorations of the 1798 rebellion and how much it says about Ireland in 1998.