Public Talk
Declan Kiberd: Irish Modernisms, Joycean Contexts

The talk will derive from Kiberd's book Inventing Ireland, that gives a perspective on the Irish literary tradition, essentially arguing that the English "invented" their own view of Ireland by making it a subconscious dumping ground for a colonising world-view. The importance of Inventing Ireland stems from its ground-breaking post-colonial treatment of a country where poetry and story-telling, in oral and written forms, acted as a crucial antidote to political and intellectual suppression by a dominant occupying imperial culture. As a long text, Inventing Ireland also includes careful assessment of neglected issues such as the importance of Irish women writers. It is a comprehensive look at practically every Irish author of international acclaim. In this sense it can serve as a reference book of no small note for the Irish literary canon. The result is a major literary history of modern Ireland, combining detailed and daring interpretations of literary masterpieces with assessments of the wider role of language, sport, clothing, politics, and philosophy in the Irish revival.
In dazzling comparisons with the experience of other postcolonial peoples, the author makes many overdue connections. Rejecting the notion that artists such as Wilde, Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett became modern to the extent that they made themselves "European," he contends that the Irish experience was a dramatic instance of experimental modernity and shows how the country's artists blazed a trail that led directly to the magic realism of a García Márquez or a Rushdie. Kiberd's analysis of the culture is interwoven with sketches of the political background, bringing the course of modern Irish literature into sharp relief against a tragic history of conflict, stagnation, and change.

Go back: James Joyce Literary Society Belgrade