from Part III - Missed Translations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 November 2024
In Edna Longley’s essay “Irish Bards and American Audiences,” she claims that the long-term consequences of the Irish Revival have meant that Americans have set up a “global fan-club” for Irish literature, which risks homogenizing and sanitizing Ireland’s literary output, and leads to a reciprocal state of “Hiberno-American blandness.” Yet, since Longley published her essay two decades ago, there have been continual reevaluations of “Irish” and “Irish-American” literary identities. This chapter considers how far Irish(-American) writers still risk perpetuating what Diane Negra, in The Irish in US (2006), has described as a “theme park” idealization of Irish culture. What does this mean for writers whose work alternatively courts, or avoids, clichés of nostalgia, immigration, and transatlantic travel? What are the cultural consequences of the “blandness” Longley describes? The chapter covers writing by Irish and Irish-American filmmakers, novelists, and dramatists from the past twenty years – including Sally Rooney, Colm Tóibín, Martin McDonagh, and John Patrick Shanley – to consider how such works negotiate the delicate balance between cultural credibility and artistic independence.
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