Toward a Materialist-Formalist History of Twentieth-Century Irish Literature

Abstract

Most accounts of contemporary Irish culture tend to be largely affirmative, even Whiggish, in cast. The contemporary cultural moment is recurrently described as one characterized by renaissance, experiment, and iconoclasm, a moment vitalized by the emergence of radical new voices, styles, media, forms, and energies. This upbeat view is clearly underpinned by a broader sociohistorical narrative, also of a decidedly Whiggish temper, in which contemporary Irish society is construed as one engaged over recent decades in an often laborious, but on the whole overwhelmingly successful, overcoming of a more repressive, provincial, censorious past. As Irish society leaves behind that past to become more liberal, secular, postnationalistic, multicultural, more confidently European in its outlook, contemporary Irish culture—the account runs—gives imaginative expression to this dynamic process of social change.