“…Andrew Murphy highlights the complexity of what may appear to be a counterintuitive claim … that Shakespeare might actually be seen as Ireland's national poet, just as much as he is England's national poet. Irish nationalist leaders, from Theobald Wolfe Tone in the 1790s to Patrick Pearse at the beginning of the twentieth century, had a peculiar devotion to Shakespeare and found in his work something profoundly fruitful for their own thinking about the nation … Shakespeare can thus be said both to register the instability of the concept of the nation and to offer a vehicle for Irish nationalists to work through the complexities and volatilities of their own national constructs (Murphy, , p. 206; see also Murphy, ; Maley, ).Milton, too, was read by Theobald Wolfe Tone, who cites Paradise Lost on a number of occasions in his diary (e.g., Tone, , 3, p. 49). John Toland, Charles Leslie, Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, Henry Grattan, James Joyce, W.B.…”
This essay examines a largely undocumented aspect of Irish literary history: the reception and circulation of John Milton's writings in Ireland. Milton's negative views of the inhabitants of Ireland have been well documented, but this essay analyses some of the intellectual responses of readers, writers, and thinkers in Ireland to the English republic's leading apologist for the conquest of Ireland. I argue that such an approach is required in order to redirect the critical narrative away from examinations of the hackneyed anti‐Irish stereotypes written for colonial agendas and to shed light on the ways in which Milton was read to speak to and about a range of political, religious, social, and ethical issues in early modern and late modern Ireland. The essay also seeks to introduce my book‐length study of the topic which, ranging across printed and manuscript sources—from Irish translations of Milton's poetry to political appropriations of his controversial prose—interrogates the collective assumptions, aspirations, fears, anxieties, and prejudices of readers and writers in Ireland as they are revealed in response to the self‐conflicting voice of civil and religious liberties, on the one hand, and aggressive English colonialism on the other.
“…Andrew Murphy highlights the complexity of what may appear to be a counterintuitive claim … that Shakespeare might actually be seen as Ireland's national poet, just as much as he is England's national poet. Irish nationalist leaders, from Theobald Wolfe Tone in the 1790s to Patrick Pearse at the beginning of the twentieth century, had a peculiar devotion to Shakespeare and found in his work something profoundly fruitful for their own thinking about the nation … Shakespeare can thus be said both to register the instability of the concept of the nation and to offer a vehicle for Irish nationalists to work through the complexities and volatilities of their own national constructs (Murphy, , p. 206; see also Murphy, ; Maley, ).Milton, too, was read by Theobald Wolfe Tone, who cites Paradise Lost on a number of occasions in his diary (e.g., Tone, , 3, p. 49). John Toland, Charles Leslie, Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, Henry Grattan, James Joyce, W.B.…”
This essay examines a largely undocumented aspect of Irish literary history: the reception and circulation of John Milton's writings in Ireland. Milton's negative views of the inhabitants of Ireland have been well documented, but this essay analyses some of the intellectual responses of readers, writers, and thinkers in Ireland to the English republic's leading apologist for the conquest of Ireland. I argue that such an approach is required in order to redirect the critical narrative away from examinations of the hackneyed anti‐Irish stereotypes written for colonial agendas and to shed light on the ways in which Milton was read to speak to and about a range of political, religious, social, and ethical issues in early modern and late modern Ireland. The essay also seeks to introduce my book‐length study of the topic which, ranging across printed and manuscript sources—from Irish translations of Milton's poetry to political appropriations of his controversial prose—interrogates the collective assumptions, aspirations, fears, anxieties, and prejudices of readers and writers in Ireland as they are revealed in response to the self‐conflicting voice of civil and religious liberties, on the one hand, and aggressive English colonialism on the other.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
