Primitivism, Science, and the Irish Revival

Bibliographic Data

ID8103398
AuthorsSinéad Garrigan Mattar (corresponding author)
Year2004
Pages277
Publication date2004-02-26
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenuePrimitivism, science, and the Irish revival (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268955.001.0001
OpenAlexW600017948
Open LibraryOL3303883M
ISBN9780199268955
LanguageEN
Citations received24

The literature of the Irish Revival of the 1890s should be seen as a hinge between the 19th and 20th centuries. Its authors appropriated the ‘primitive’ through the lenses of comparative anthropology, mythology, and colonial travel-writing, and actively strove to re-establish contact with primitive modes through ‘the study of mythology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis’. They were engaged in a complex and volitional primitivism, which became ‘modernist’ as it utilised the findings of social science. The works of William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge, and Lady Gregory are all analysed as the product of such influences. However, this book also suggests that Celticism itself underwent a sea-change during the 19th century, recreating itself in academic circles as an anti-primitivist science known as Celtology. It was only a matter of time before Yeats and Synge, who read widely in the works of Celtology, would look to this new science to find alternatives to the primitivism of the Twilight

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Irish · Literature · Mythology · History · Irish and British Studies · Philosophy · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · 19th century · Celtic, in literature · Celts in literature · civilization · Economic conditions · English literature · Europe · History and criticism · Intellectual life · ireland · Irish Authors · Literature and anthropology · Literature and science · Mythology, Celtic, in literature · Primitivism · Primitivism in literature · Science

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