Postcolonial Ireland

Abstract

This chapter considers postcolonial Ireland, with particular reference to politics, culture, and the construction of a new nation state. Its primary purpose is to indicate some of the ways in which postcolonial readings of modern Irish literary culture in the period that stretches from the Irish Literary Revival through the Counter-Revival and up to the contemporary Northern Ireland Troubles can help to reconfigure received versions of modern Irish literary and cultural history. Postcolonial readings of Irish culture have the capacity not only to critique established versions of Irish literary history, but also to extend the scope of inquiry to engage with the cultural dilemmas of subaltern groups such as women, workers, and emigrants. Irish postcolonial analysis is conceived here as the most expansive and outward-looking of the various modes of sociocultural analysis currently shaping Irish studies.