Memory Ireland: Volume 1: History and Modernity

Irish Studies, Syracuse University Press

by Oona Frawley (Editor)

Despite the ease with which scholars have used the term "memory" in recent decades, its definition remains enigmatic. Does cultural memory rely on the memories of individuals, or does it take shape beyond the borders of the individual mind? Cultural memory has garnered particular attention within Irish studies. With its trauma-filled history and sizable global diaspora, Ireland presents an ideal subject for work in this vein. What do stereotypes of Irish memory--as extensive, unforgiving, begrudging, but also blank on particular, usually traumatic, subjects-reveal about the ways in which cultural remembrance works in contemporary Irish culture and in Irish diasporic culture? How do icons of Irishness-from the harp to the cottage, from the Celtic cross to a figure like James Joyce-function in cultural memory? This collection seeks to address these questions as it maps a landscape of cultural memory in Ireland through theoretical, historical, literary, and cultural explorations by top scholars in the field of Irish studies.

In a series that will ultimately include four volumes, the sixteen essays in this first volume explore remembrance and forgetting throughout history, from early modern Ireland to contemporary multicultural Ireland. Among the many subjects addressed: Guy Beiner disentangles "collective" from "folk" memory in "Remembering and Forgetting the Irish Rebellion of 1798," and Anne Dolan looks at local memory of the civil war in "Embodying the Memory of War and Civil War." The volume concludes with Alan Titley's "The Great Forgetting," a compelling argument for viewing modern Irish culture as an artifact of the Europeanization of Ireland and for bringing into focus the urgent need for further, wide-ranging Irishlanguage scholarship.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2010

About the author

Born in NYC to Irish-actor parents, Oona has lived in Ireland full-time since completing her Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. She has held post-doctoral fellowships at Queen's University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin, and has lectured in the Department of English at Maynooth University since 2008. Oona's research interests lie in Irish Studies, particularly of the late 19th and 29th centuries, in Memory and Trauma Studies, and in ecocriticism. A Hennessy Award nominee, her first novel, Flight, was published in 2014 and was nominated for an Irish Book Award in the 'newcomer' category.Oona is currently writing a book on postcolonial ecocriticism, comparing Irish, American, Australian and New Zealand literature for attitudes towards land development, waste, and the environment.

(from https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/eng...)

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good window into studying memory and history in the Irish context, both for theory and for some specific modes of memory discussed. Some of the collected pieces less strong than others, though. Frawley's theory of cultural imperatives that structure/shape memory also strikes me as tenuous -- she makes a provocative case for them, but never makes quite clear what counts as a cultural imperative, seems to go back-and-forth on how dominant they are in the process of constructing memory, and leaves unclear how these imperatives themselves change.

[Vivian Valvano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very impressive series. Very impressive collection of essays in this volume.