Abstract
Inspired by Ben Novick’s studies on the response of the Irish advanced nationalist press to the First World War, this paper focuses on a less-explored topic, i.e. the representation of the conflict in the separatist press for Ireland’s youth. Combining literary and historical interests, I devote my attention to the editorials and literary contributions published in the pages of the juvenile periodicals during and after the war, to highlight how these papers came to popularise, among the youngsters, a specific reception of the first ‘total’ conflict. Spy- and war- stories, ballads and aislings took hold of the boys’ and girls’ imagination: a powerful propagandist instrument, popular literature buttressed a nationalist agenda. At the same time, given the readers’ young age, these periodicals aimed to shape what was to become Ireland’s public memory of the Great War. In the public sphere of post-war Ireland, many soldiers were treated with disdain or indifference. The First World War and its protagonists were condemned to a period of oblivion, which has lasted until quite recently. Textual attention to the rhetoric and literary strategies adopted by the contributors helps to expose the nuances and shifts in the Irish nationalists’ view on war.
Highlights
Lord Dunsany, the Anglo-Irish noble who wrote fantasy stories that influenced H.P
In the second year of the conflict, he was serving as captain with the Fifth Battalion of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers: yet his wound was not sustained in military action at the front, but from a squad of rebels in Dublin on April the 24th
Dunsany was on leave in the Irish capital city, waiting to be mobilized to France. That morning he went to Dublin Castle to offer his services to the British forces, because there were rumours of a rebellion: the Easter Rising had just broken out and, while he was reaching the place to which he had been appointed, he was shot in the head, wounded and taken prisoner by a group of insurgents (Dunsany, 1938)
Summary
Lord Dunsany, the Anglo-Irish noble who wrote fantasy stories that influenced H.P. Lovecraft, was numbered among the wounded of the First World War in the official military records of 1916.
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