Canadian Journal of Irish StudiesCanadian Association of Irish Studies

Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival: A Changeling Art by John Wilson FosterReview by: Gerald DaweThe Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Jan., 1989), pp. 94-97Published by: Canadian Journal of Irish StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25512751 .

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94 Canadian Journal of Irish Studies

and partly as the reflection of the final decline of the civilization represented by the Big House, with which nineteenth-century Irish narrative begins (Castle

Rackrent), continues (Le Fanu's Uncle Silas), and ends (The Real Charlotte, The

Big House oflnver). The temporal limits of this last chapter are obviously somewhat strained, as

Lubbers himself acknowledges, Lover and Lever having produced their first

works in the 1830s, while Somerville and Ross's last work did not appear until

1946. The chosen threefold frame of reference results, moreover, not surprisingly, in realignments of traditional emphasis which might well meet with resistance

from the reader. One might wonder, for instance, whether Le Fanu is adequately treated in four pages, or Kickham in little more than one, while Mrs. Hall is

allotted an entire chapter. One might wish to see more discussion of Maturin, or

more than a single footnote on Bram Stoker, or at least some reference to such

(admittedly minor) writers as Lady Blessington, Selina Bunbury, Caroline Nor

ton, or Thomas Colley Grattan. These are minor quibbles, however. Within the

framework he sets out for himself Lubbers presents his case persuasively. The

book concludes with a useful bibliography and index. Apart from some dozen or so typographical errors noted and the switching of pages 234 and 236 it is

excellently and attractively produced. The writing throughout is concise and

engaging, and the volume constitutes an excellent introduction to the early history of Irish narrative in English?though as yet, unfortunately, only for a German

speaking audience; an English translation would be a very worthwhile under

taking.

Patrick O'Neill

John Wilson Foster, Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival: A Changeling Art,

Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1987, 407 pp. $35.00

Irish literary criticism is notoriously introverted. Chastened by history, literary criticism in Ireland has generally been content to take the writers at their own

word. So Yeats's proclamations of the Celtic Twilight and the upsurge of cultural

nationalism, which he and others, like Lady Gregory, Synge and Moore, tapped into for inspiration, are often taken for granted. From those late nineteenth- and

early twentieth-century beginnings, modern Irish literature seems like a foregone conclusion. Out of Yeats came Clarke; against them both Kavanagh; who influ enced Montague who begat Heaney and so forth ....

The alternative line runs from Joyce and links up with Kinsella. These crude

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Reviews 95

caricatures of literary history have a pedagogical imperative. It is, after all, easier

to teach an established canonical line of literary precedence and influence,

especially when such a "tradition" has the benefit of historical benediction. The

big problem is, of course, that in doing so we not only simplify history; we

actually distort it. In the process literature and criticism get cramped into repro ducible categories which become themselves the sources out of which we read

and understand literary traditions. One recalls Beckett's austerely dismissive

complaint: "Must we wring the neck of a certain system in order to stuff it into

a contemporary pigeon-hole, or modify the dimensions of that pigeon-hole for

the satisfaction of the analogymongers? Literary criticism is not book-keeping" ("Dante . . . Bruno . . . Vico . . .

Joyce").

In recent years, however, a new development has taken place with the work of

critics such as Seamus Deane, J. C. C. Mays, Terence Brown, W. J. McCormack, Edna Longley and John Wilson Foster.

This is not the business of revisionism but rather the redeployment of critical

focus to see what other kinds of literature were being written in Ireland during the time of Yeats's ascendancy. In the main this focus has been upon poetry but

with Terence Brown's Ireland: A Social and Cultural History (1981) the ground widened considerably to embrace all forms of literary endeavour: prose, poetry, drama and the outlets available for each. W. J. McCormack's Ascendency and

Tradition in Anglo-Irish Literary History from 1789 to 1939 completely redrew the terms of critical reference, while Seamus Deane's Celtic Revivals examined some central figures in modern Irish literature, again across the various genres, to provide a fresh intellectual perspective on Irish writing.

J. C. Mays has, in various critical essays on Joyce, Flann O'Brien and, in

particular on poets such as Brian Coffey, drafted a new critical agenda. In his

"Introductory Essay" to the special Irish University Review (Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1975) devoted to Brian Coffey, Mays noted "an alternative tradition" whereby

"Ireland would define itself vis-a-vis the culture of Catholic Europe and not

according to a politico-social programme derived from the relics of Romanticism and late Victorian taste."

On another front, Edna Longley's Poetry in the Wars (1986) has sought to

reaffirm what she perceives as the threatened independence of the literary imagi nation under assault from history-mongers. Hers is a traditionalist defence, elucidated with great faith in the virtue of poetry to survive the worst of political times, and Ms. Longley brushes off dismissively any claims to re-interpret the canon as it presently stands.

John Wilson Foster's Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival: A Changeling Art is a major breach in the complacent assumptions that surround the critical percep tions of Irish prose. On several counts it is a major work but perhaps primarily

because of its unwillingness to take anything for granted. As a result the book is

elaborately detailed, possibly over-anxiously so, and irreverent.

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96 Canadian Journal of Irish Studies

"One of the aims," writes Foster in his Introduction, "is to call attention to the

neglected constituency of realism?dissenting or no?during the time of the

revival." Foster prosecutes his case well. For starters he writes lucidly and has a

sense of style in his own writing (something which in itself is at a premium in

Irish Studies) and brings to his study an insider's vision, never coyly stated but

always roundly confirming of a wider critical context. Take, for example, what

is for me the centre-piece of this fine book, "Waking the Dead: The Young James

Joyce, Dublin and Irish Revival" where Foster, obviously excited with what he

is writing about (Joyce's "The Dead"), remarks:

... it is true that the festivities of the Irish often slide in

the course of an evening from euphoria into nostalgia, remorse, and sentimentality (sometimes by way of dissen

sion) from a sense of infinite possession and possibility into a sense of infinite loss and despondency, (p. 147)

"Waking the Dead" ranks for me as one ofthe most illuminating essays into actual

artistic accomplishments of Irish writing, similar to Seamus Deane's exemplary introduction to the Selected Plays of Brian Friel (1984). For in both cases, the

critical sharpness of the reader is constructively displayed, not for its own sake, but rather to show what makes a particular piece of writing important. Foster goes on to state in the same chapter:

. . . Joyce preferred Europeanism and cosmopolitanism

over the narrow and dogmatic demands of Irish

nationalism, however weakly or illogically Gabriel expres ses that preference. Joyce refused to shun the England of

Shakespeare and the Europe of Ibsen for a bygone Celtic Ireland ...

(p. 156)

Throughout A Changeling Art Foster teases out the tension between these two

forces, neither gloating over his own intellectual preference nor seeking to belittle

that which he finds "narrow and dogmatic." A Changeling Art is therefore a generous book, and whether he is dealing with

AE, Yeats, Synge, or lesser-known writers such as Gerald O'Donovan, Brinsley MacNamara or Seamus O'Kelly, Foster's primary concern is with finding the

imaginative space wherein the cultural and political differences of Ireland can

co-habit. In attempting to discover the literary possibilities of this concern, Joyce

provides Foster with, I think, his strongest case, so it is perhaps regrettable that he did not extend his discussion of Joyce to embrace Ulysses. But, as he relates

regarding "The Dead," Gabriel's problem "is not, as many critics see it, to

become one with those at the party who are 'alive' but to escape all of them for

they are all without exception touched by death, directly or indirectly. But he must escape through them, not from them" (p. 156, italics added).

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Reviews 97

This problematical flight is embedded in Joyce's own struggle for a style, what

Foster calls "transcendent realism":

. . . transcendent because it is musical and visionary and

earns itself by assimilating the elements of a rival litera

ture, realism because it is made possible by the infinite

pain of Gabriel Conroy's self-realization. For Joyce, as for

Yeats, the self must be splintered and dissolved before self

transcendence is achievable, but for Joyce, only dissolu

tion of a real, humane, and authentic self makes transcen

dence desirable, and then only at surprising and unsolicited moments, (p. 174)

The realism, like the escape through rather than from, is the course which Fictions

of the Irish Revival copiously charts. The sooner the book is issued in paperback the better, so that many more can make the journey that Foster has undertaken on

our behalf.

Gerald Dawe

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