Marginal Irish Modernisms

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This project will undertake a re-examination of Irish cultural and political experience during a key period of the country's modern history - between 1879 (the commencement of the Land War) and 1939 (Eire's adoption of neutrality in World War II, and the 'end' of Modernism with the publication of Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake'). Progressing from an acknowledgement of the assumptions that have underpinned conventional models of Irish Modernism, our principal aims are:1) to reconfigure the existing critical landscape as it is currently contested across disciplines in humanities (e.g. literature and history), the arts (e.g. fine art and music) and social sciences (e.g. sociology and politics);2) to establish a longer-term, multi-disciplinary analysis of Irish cultural experience since the early twentieth century;3) to disseminate our findings as widely as possible, and in ways that affect public perception of Irish cultural identity.The project is multidisciplinary in scope, drawing on current debates in a range of fields including English, History, Politics and Cultural Studies. Contemporary opinion regards Ireland as having a unique relationship with modernity in general, and with cultural Modernism in particular. In this account, the country produced some of the principal voices of Anglophone Modernism (e.g. Yeats, Joyce, Beckett). After seven hundred years of colonisation (the story goes) Ireland was a fractured country, its culture alienated to the point of trauma. Irish society in the nineteenth century was thus already 'Modernist' - already predisposed (through its politically and economically dependent status, as well as through the experience of profoundly traumatic events such as the Great Famine of the 1840s) to the processes of alienation and decentring that would in time come to constitute the cornerstones of the international Modernist movement.This model has largely determined the trajectory of debates on subsequent Irish history. It is as a response to Modernist dislocation and fragmentation that all future developments (independence, emigration, war, scandal, etc.) come into focus.Whilst compelling, this account does not do justice to the richness or the complexity of Irish Modernism during the fervent decades after 1879. Many figures of potential importance (e.g. 'minor' writers such as Alice Milligan) as well as many ideas of potential relevance (e.g. anarchism) are routinely relegated to the margins of debate.By promoting discussion between scholars from different disciplines, Marginal Irish Modernisms will improve our understanding of how a range of ideas, practices, texts and events from a crucial period in Irish history might be considered from the perspective of Modernism, and how such a consideration might in turn enable contemporary scholars to re-interpret Modernism itself.This aim will be accomplished primarily through a series of interdisciplinary networking events involving academics with research interests in Ireland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Key international figures will feature in each event and the attendance of new researchers and research students will be encouraged and supported. Events will be held in international locations (London, Dublin, Liverpool). It is anticipated that once established, the project will continue into new fora, including a monograph series and a dedicated journal.This major intervention in the academic field will be matched by a determination to create opportunities for wide public dissemination of research. The project will engage a range of stakeholders to advance their understanding of a key period in the formative development of Ireland and Irish identity, and to challenge ideas which have held sway for too long. Such an intervention will in turn contribute to the re-imagination of subsequent Irish history, and to the re-orientation of its current status.