Tuesday, 2 May 2017

WHY DID SO MANY IRISH WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CHOOSE TO LIVE IN EXILE?

Sean O'Faolain
Emigration has been a fact of Irish life for over one hundred years, so it’s natural that some writers should have left Ireland too.

However there were particular reasons why many Irish writers chose exile in the decades after Independence.

In many ways, Irish society was already in the process of becoming like any other English province. The most urgent task for the leaders was to clearly formulate a new identity. They decided that it should be catholic, Irish-speaking, rural and moral, drawing its inspiration from its distant heroic past, and its traditions through the ages.

Twentieth century materialism should not be allowed to corrupt the Irish people, many of whom saw themselves as the spiritual saviours of Europe.

Irish society became less liberal; tolerant and pluralist than it had been. Then in 1929 a censorship act was passed. As a result, any writer whose intellectual or moral views offended the defenders of the new Irish state was banned. This state of affairs lasted, gradually improving, for forty years.

More information: Irish Central

The list of banned books reads like a catalogue of the classics of Irish and European literature.

Many Irish writers chose to live in exile abroad, where they could be published and find an audience for their works.

Source: Why do the Irish? by Fiana Griffin

 

There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, 
that it makes things happen. 
Sean O'Faolain

No comments:

Post a Comment