Showing papers in "Irish Studies Review in 2004"
TL;DR: A survey of music in contemporary Ireland cannot be complete without examining the relationship between music in general culture and music in formal education as mentioned in this paper, and one of the goals of formal education is to support the development of music.
Abstract: A survey of music in contemporary Ireland cannot be complete without examining the relationship between music in general culture and music in formal education. One of the goals of formal education ...
18 citations
TL;DR: What is Irish Studies now? Is it just a shorthand term for the interdisciplinary/intercultural study of "the Irish" and "Irishness" or is it a paradigm that has become exclusively coup... as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: What is ‘Irish Studies’ now? Is it, in fact, just a shorthand term for the interdisciplinary/intercultural study of ‘the Irish’ and ‘Irishness’, or is it a paradigm that has become exclusively coup...
18 citations
TL;DR: Punk nostalgia has been going on now for a long time as mentioned in this paper and the decade from 1986 to 1989 established the trend (and the market) for the phenomenon of punk nostalgia, and the first wave...
Abstract: Punk nostalgia has been going on now for a long time. The tenth anniversary years (from 1986 to 1989) established the trend (and the market) for the phenomenon of punk nostalgia, and the first wave...
12 citations
TL;DR: In 2001, the Music Board of Ireland (MBI) was established by the Republic of Ireland's Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Sile de Valera as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In 2001 the Music Board of Ireland (MBI) was established by the Republic of Ireland's Minister for Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands, Sile de Valera. Made up of a number of prominent figure...
12 citations
TL;DR: This paper pointed out that the dominant forms of popular music in all contemporary societies have originated at the social margins, among the poor, the migrant, the rootless, the "queer" and the marginalized.
Abstract: As Simon Frith has pointed out, the ‘dominant forms [of popular music] in all contemporary societies have originated at the social margins—among the poor, the migrant, the rootless, the “queer” ’1....
11 citations
TL;DR: Meeting the British as discussed by the authors is based on the story of the last trace of a fluttering handkerchief of a doomed ancestor in the gothic masterpiece Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Maturin.
Abstract: Paul Muldoon’s poem ‘Bechbretha’ is set at a 1970s garden party in Hillsborough, Northern Ireland, and it ends with Merlyn Rees (then minister-in-charge of the region) producing something from ‘his mulberry cummerbund’ and declaring, ‘This ... is the very handkerchief that Melmoth the Wanderer/left at the top of the cliff’ [2]. The lines allude to the conclusion of Charles Maturin’s sprawling gothic masterpiece Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), in which John Melmoth discovers on a precipice over the Irish Sea a fluttering handkerchief, the ‘last trace’ of his damned ancestor [3]. By indirectly and archly questioning both how Melmoth’s handkerchief ended up in the cummerbund of Merlyn (the Magician?) Rees and where the handkerchief has been in space and time between County Wicklow in 1816 and County Down in the 1970s, ‘Meeting the British’ adumbrates an apparitional genealogy of Irish supernaturalist fiction from Melmoth to—say—Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark (1996) [4]. One important apparition of this gene genie is Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890; 1891). A literalist inquiry for the handkerchief might locate it in a simile from the end of chapter XVII: Dorian sees something frightening at his country house, swoons, recovers, and then remembers with a recurrent ‘thrill of terror’ that ‘pressed against the window of the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of James Vane watching him’ [5]. However, as Henry James observes, ‘Everything Oscar does is a deliberate trap for the literalist ...’ [6]. A less literal apparition of Melmoth occurs earlier in Dorian, after the protagonist has murdered Basil Hallward and is waiting for Alan Campbell to arrive and dispose of the body:
9 citations
TL;DR: Since the 1960s, Ireland has specialised in the production of a kind of popular music that hovers along the borders between a number of different genres and traditions as mentioned in this paper, which is referred to as Irish Folk Music.
Abstract: Since the 1960s, Ireland has specialised in the production of a kind of popular music that hovers along the borders between a number of different genres and traditions. Encompassing a range of diff...
7 citations
TL;DR: The visionary affinities of W. B. Yeats and Sean O'Casey were discussed in this article, where they were compared to each other in terms of their faithfulness to Ireland.
Abstract: (2004). The visionary affinities of W. B. Yeats and Sean O'Casey. Irish Studies Review: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 293-301.
7 citations
TL;DR: Yeats provided a famous account of the Irish in his poem "The Statues" as mentioned in this paper, which suggested that the Irish were an untimely people, members of an ancient sect cast adrift on the "filthy modern world".
Abstract: Late in life, Yeats provided a famous account of the Irish in his poem ‘The Statues’. The Irish, he suggested, were an untimely people—members of an ‘ancient sect’ cast adrift on the ‘filthy modern...
6 citations
TL;DR: A long history of seeking to regulate, even prohibit, dancing owing to its perceived associations with sexual behaviour can be traced back to the 16th and 17th century in both its Protestant and Catholic manifestations as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Puritan Ireland in both its Protestant and Catholic manifestations has a long history of seeking to regulate, even prohibit, dancing owing to its perceived associations with sexual behaviour In fa
5 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the critic as artist is considered in the picture of Dorian Gray and the critic-as-critic as artist in the story of "Digging for Darwin".
Abstract: (2004). Digging for Darwin: Bitter wisdom in the picture of Dorian Gray and 'the critic as artist'. Irish Studies Review: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 315-327.
TL;DR: In this article, Irish myth and Irish national consciousness are discussed in the context of Irish Studies Review: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 271-281, 2004.
Abstract: (2004). Irish myth and Irish national consciousness. Irish Studies Review: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 271-281.
TL;DR: Ruddygore parodies of gothic melodrama have become classics of late-Victorian satire as discussed by the authors and have become popular satire parodies in the late 19th century.
Abstract: Two parodies of gothic melodrama which have become classics of late-Victorian satire appeared in the first months of 1887: Court and Society Review published the first instalment of Oscar Wilde’s short story ‘The Canterville Ghost’ on 23 February, a month after the debut of Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Entirely Original Supernatural Operag’, Ruddygore, or the Witch’s Curse, on 22 January. Ruddygore’s history of reception and revision is complex and contradictory. Initial audience reaction appears to have been divided. The Times reported ‘a phenomenon never before experienced at the Savoy Theatre. With the rapturous applause of a more than sympathetic first night audience ... a small but very determined minority mingled its hisses’ [1]. The Monthly Musical Record’s reviewer observed less ‘rapture’ than bemusement, at best: ‘At the first performance there were many of the best known people in art, literature, and music; but they did not laugh much ... They wondered what it was all about. The gallery hissed, and at the conclusion uttered wolfish yells, indicative of dissatisfaction’ [2]. One cause of popular outcry was the opera’s title. According to the Monthly Musical Record, ‘When [the title] was announced, everybody was astonished. Many were disgusted. Ruddygore; or, the Witch’s Curse, does not look elegant in the bills of a West-end theatre, patronised by “Society”. It is more like the title of a Transpontine melodrama of the old but now defunct type’ [3]. So vociferous was the protest against the title, it was changed immediately (though finally by merely substituting an ‘i’ for the ‘y’ in ‘Ruddygore’ after more thoroughgoing alterations were considered), and this was not the only revision made to the opera, one of the most extensively revised in the Gilbert and Sullivan canon. In addition to changes made throughout the initial run, D’Oyly Carte’s 1922 revival overhauled the second Act entirely, including the controversial final scene, in which generations of patriarchal ghosts, ‘practically alive’, reanimated portraits, stepped down from their picture frames to claim the Chorus of Bridesmaids as their brides. Most modern productions have retained these changes and conclude instead with the Bridesmaids marrying the solidly fleshed, less equivocally animate Dashing Dukes and Blades. What appears to have inspired uneasiness in Ruddygore’s audience, as well as in the opera itself, is indeterminacy of genre, a dishevelled mixing of comedy with the conventions of gothic melodrama. As several opening-night reviews make clear, audience expectations were frustrated, expectations shaped not only by memories of Gilbert and Sullivan’s previous successes, but also by vaguer, more discomfiting recollections of the genre Ruddygore parodies, the ‘Transpontine melodrama of the old but now defunct type’, which some reviewers suggested was better left forgotten, an apparently too-recent source of cultural embarrassment. This persistence of the unregenerate past creates instabilities which affect both the opera and its audience: Ruddygore is frequently
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors claim that the plays of Martin McDonagh offer representations of Irish reality, which is equivalent to regarding the films of Quentin Tarantino as images of urban life in the USA.
Abstract: To claim that the plays of Martin McDonagh offer representations of Irish reality is equivalent to regarding the films of Quentin Tarantino as images of urban life in the USA, or treating David Lyn...
TL;DR: For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world as if it were for the beholding, but it has failed to understand that the world is not for the gaze but for the hearing as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: For twenty‐five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible...
TL;DR: In 1997, in an article which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph, Michael Longley objected to the ‘recent effort to improve on’ the 36th Ulster Division memorial at the Somme as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In 1997, in an article which appeared in the Belfast Telegraph, Michael Longley objected to the ‘recent effort to improve on’ the 36th Ulster Division memorial at the Somme. The original memorial i...
TL;DR: There is a complex and fundamentally important relationship between politics and education in Northern Ireland as mentioned in this paper, and the political and educational history of Northern Ireland provides an importa-mentiona...
Abstract: There is a complex and fundamentally important relationship between politics and education in Northern Ireland. Indeed, the political and educational history of Northern Ireland provides an importa...
TL;DR: Tom Murphy as discussed by the authors was born in Tuam, Co. Galway, in 1935, the youngest of ten children in a Catholic family, and his interest in the theatre began early; he acted in two plays in Irish while still at school.
Abstract: Tom Murphy was born in Tuam, Co. Galway, in 1935, the youngest of ten children in a Catholic family. His interest in the theatre began early; he acted in two plays in Irish while still at school. I...
TL;DR: In the last decade or fifteen years, there has been a considerable growth in scholarship on the tradition of classical music in Ireland as mentioned in this paper, which is a most welcome development, given the decidedly marginal place that this tradition has tended to occupy in general awareness.
Abstract: The last ten or fifteen years have seen a considerable growth in scholarship on the tradition of classical music in Ireland. This is a most welcome development, given the decidedly marginal place that this tradition has tended to occupy in general awareness. Most Irish people know little or nothing about its history and have, at best, a rather vague understanding of the factors that might account for its somewhat retarded development here. It is rather difficult, however, for most members of the public to remedy this deficiency in their knowledge, even if they wish to do so. At present, there is not even a basic history of Irish music to which they could refer: the last one to appear was written as long ago as 1905—a gallant but rather unreliable and decidedly tendentious effort by the scholar and minor composer Grattan Flood (1859–1928), who, in his zeal to add lustre to his account, was led to claim implausible Irish ancestries for a number of prominent English composers such as Dowland, Campion and Purcell, as well as make some most improbable assertions of Irish precedence in the invention of musical forms [1]. And since then, only a very small number of books on Irish music have been published. There are almost no biographies of Irish composers available, or any extended studies of their work. In many cases, it is virtually impossible to come by detailed information about even the more important figures, short of undertaking the necessary research oneself. To make matters worse, their music can only be consulted for the most part in archives and much of it has never been published or recorded for commercial release. The frustrations that this causes will be immediately apparent. Readers curious to learn about Irish literature can turn to a positively bewildering number of publications, ranging in nature from popular general introductions all the way to specialised studies of the most dauntingly esoteric kind. Most of the principal works by Irish writers are easily available. The major figures have been admirably well served, on the whole, by biographers and many of the minor figures have been the subject of at least a monograph or two. Should they wish to find out something about the historical, cultural and social contexts from which all of this writing emerged they can have recourse to a variety of excellent literary histories. In most cases, therefore, the only significant obstacles in the way of gratifying the reader’s curiosity are those imposed by the limits of his or her own patience and industry. This is a state of affairs which the Irish musician can but envy, for the tradition of discourse about Irish art music is not only meagre but also, for the most part, rather uninteresting, a few distinguished contributions apart. This places us in a decidedly
TL;DR: O'Casey was Ireland's greatest playwright of the century as discussed by the authors, who most passionately, most powerfully and most memorably dramatised the traumatic birth of the nation.
Abstract: stands out as Ireland’s greatest playwright of the century. He it was who most passionately, most powerfully and most memorably dramatised the traumatic birth of the nation. He it was who gave to the twentieth-century theatre a greater range of vivid and original characters, male and female, than any other Irish playwright. O’Casey’s language, controversial though it may be in some critical circles, colour and vitality has won for him a lasting place in the international repertory. [1]
TL;DR: The phrase of Irish extraction means "of Irish origin" in a particular sense: since "extraction" derives from Latin extrahere ‘to draw out or remove’, to describe something as ‘of Irish extractio...
Abstract: The phrase ‘of Irish extraction’ means ‘of Irish origin’ in a particular sense: since ‘extraction’ derives from Latin extrahere ‘to draw out or remove’, to describe something as ‘of Irish extractio...