Writing and Theorising the Irish Working Class

Ireland's Working-Class Literature: Neglected Themes, Amphibian Academics, and the Challenges Ahead

“…36 The general theorisation of social class in Ireland, north and south, is relatively poor, which in turn has hampered connectivity between disciplines in relation to how class manifests itself in things like publishing or arts participation. 37 'widening participation' measures in higher education, but also observed, more depressingly, the endurance of feelings of alienation amongst working-class higher-education students. A high proportion had, at university, experienced 'a feeling of dislocation, or at least a sense of social distance, from the dominant culture in universities', one of the Irish students describing university as 'a foreign country'.…”

“…Many of these scholars focus on British working-class literature and cultural studies, which have been to the fore of international scholarship in this area and provide a range of approaches that Irish Studies scholars can adopt or adapt, even as -as David Convery has noted -we must be careful not to simply map British experiences of class onto Irish ones. 9 Folk song traditions indeed suggest potential affinities in relation to class and cultural histories across these islands. When The Full English, a digital archive of twelve manuscript collections of English folk songs, was launched in 2013 by the English Folk and Dance Song Society, playwright and screenwriter Lee Hall described it as 'the most exciting and significant thing to happen to British folk music in at least a generation.… To give everyone the keys to the archive of our common heritage will be an invaluable inspiration to generations of musicians and writers'.…”

“A Pole of Differentiation”: Pasts and Futures in Irish Working-Class Writing

“…2. See Convery, 2017. 3. The northern state would secure for British rule only six of the nine counties of historic Ulster, in order to maintain a Protestant majority there.…”