literary revival

literary revival, one of several terms used to refer to a movement of poets, prose writers, and playwrights (see abbey theatre) c.1890–c.1914, who looked for inspiration to Irish mythology, folklore, and popular culture. The domination of the movement by writers from middle‐ and upper‐class Protestant backgrounds (Yeats, John Millington Synge (1871–1909), and Augusta, Lady Gregory, and its concern to use Gaelic material as the basis of a revitalized Irish literature in English, has encouraged the alternative label ‘Anglo‐Irish revival’. The popular nickname ‘the Celtic twilight’ was derived from a book of this title published by Yeats in 1893.

The revival reflected the same acute concern with questions of cultural defence seen in other near contemporary movements, the Gaelic League, and D. P. Moran's ‘Irish Ireland’ campaign. But there was no consensus on how identity was to be defined or preserved. Irish‐language supporters dismissed the idea of a national literature in English. Moran and others rejected what they saw as the claim to cultural leadership by an Anglo‐Irish elite. Depictions of ‘traditional’ Irish life that failed to present a suitably idealized image in harmony with middle‐class Catholic values came under attack: in particular Synge's plays In the Shadow of the Glen (1903) and The Playboy of the Western World (1907) provoked outrage and protest. The question of how far art should be related to politics divided leading protagonists both from other groups and from one another. These often bitter controversies contributed to what in retrospect can be seen as the highly charged atmosphere of the years before 1914 (see new nationalism), and continued to influence cultural policy and attitudes in both parts of Ireland after 1922.