Introduction: Out of Ireland

Abstract

Given that “modernism” is usually associated with the metropole, and “Irish” with provincialism and cultural conservatism, the title of this Companion might be seen as something of an oxymoron. The definition of “Irish” is complicated by the island’s history of partition and diaspora, while the traditional male Olympiad of Irish modernism—Joyce, Yeats, Beckett—has been shaken up by feminist, postcolonial, environmental, New Materialist, and other critical challenges. This Companion defines modernism as resistance to orthodoxy, drawing attention to the historical coincidence of modernism in the arts with the Modernist movement in the Catholic Church, which was condemned by Pope Pius X as the “synthesis of all heresies.” Taking a hint from the Pope, this Companion pinpoints five heresies, or modes of resistance to orthodoxy, which furnish the subtitles for each section of the book: heresies of time and space, heresies of nationalism, aesthetic heresies, heresies of gender and sexuality, and critical heresies. This introduction provides an overview of each heresy, followed by brief summaries of the chapters under its rubric. It also offers pointers for further study of modernist music, visual art, and architecture in Ireland.