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ContestsLanguage and Tradition in Ireland. Continuities and Displacements by Maria Tymoczko; ColinIrelandReview by: Tony CrowleyThe Irish Review (1986-), No. 33, Global Ireland (Spring, 2005), pp. 156-160Published by: Cork University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29736287 .

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the 'question of how state power has treated the sexualised body, whether through

institutions, legislation or social policy, [which] has seen the emergence of feminist concerns as national issues during the 90s' [17]. The 'question' was in fact asked

throughout the country much earlier, in the 70s and 80s, by many dedicated and

self-less individuals who, in a hostile and bitterly contested environment, raised

these concerns without the benefit of the support systems their work in very many

ways helped to create.

Selina Guinness has raised more questions than she can (or should) answer in the

introduction to a poetry anthology, no more so than on the specifically literary

front. For example, in relation to the curious case of the spreading of the

Ulster/Republic cultural dividends, she remarks:

. . . the participation of the younger Ulster poets in the Republic's literary culture (often through the Gallery list) has brought 'Northern Irish' influ?

ences into critical circulation south of the border. [24?25]

Undoubtedly the 'influences' identified here go back, as the editor suggests, to the

earlier Northern generation of the Sixties. But why is the traffic all one-way? With

the exception of Yeats, Beckett and Kavanagh, are there no

literary influences from

the South present in northern writing? Is the influence much wider and less liter?

ary such as the allure of the west of Ireland? An inherited unease with the

Republic's history of Joycean artistic obsessiveness? Perhaps it is time to 'move on'

(after all, everyone else has) from regionally codified cultural and literary categories and explore the sense of'Irish Poetry' as a coherent and diverse tradition that is not

geographically hidebound. (In which regard I was delighted to see that Selina

Guinness did not use that daft phrase 'poetries'). Much more crucially, her selection

from 33 poets does not include one best forgotten. I am not quite sure how or why 1993 became the line in the sand, but from past

experience I know an editor has to start (and finish) somewhere. I also wondered

about the wisdom of placing the poets in alphabetical rather than in chronological order. It is (unavoidably) a pity that the anthology appeared just a little too soon for

Alan Gillis s first collection, Somebody Somewhere, published by Gallery Press. He

would have suited perfectly the rubric and range of this valuable, thought-provok?

ing and enjoyable book. It should become, by rights, a primer for all those

interested in contemporary Irish poetry.

GERALD DAWE

Contests

Maria Tymoczko and Colin Ireland, eds., Language and Tradition in Ireland. Continu?

ities and Displacements, Amherst and Boston: University of Massachussetts Press in

co-operation with the American Conference for Irish Studies, 2003.

1-55849-426-X (hbk) 1-55849-427-8 (pbk).$50/$18.95.

156 CROWLEY, 'Contests', Irish Review 33 (2005)



The editorial introduction to a set of essays such as this is an important guide to the

goals behind the collection and Tymoczko and Ireland's prolegomena provides a

clear and coherent account of their aims. In summary their contention is: that more

attention needs to be paid to Irish-language issues in Irish studies; that Ireland has

long been a place of multi-linguistic and multicultural complexity; that this histori?

cal fact presents specific difficulties and advantages; that an analysis of these

problems and opportunities will be a contribution to the dialogue about the nature

and value of tradition both in Ireland and elsewhere. In broad terms this argument is surely welcome and a collection of essays which probes different aspects of its

constituent propositions is a useful addition to ongoing debates. But there is a cen?

tral problem with the general framework of this book, and it lies in the view of

culture and history which the editors set out in their introduction.

The proper claim that 'there is never a simple way to describe a culture or

define the past' (8) is a consequence of the sophistication of anthropological and

historical methods in the past thirty years or so. In Ireland this development has

served principally to undermine simplistic and often crude accounts of Irish histo?

ry which were produced for overt political purposes.This is a point not lost on the

editors, who assert that 'we cannot project backward a time in Ireland when the

past was not reinterpreted and reformed in the service of the present, when tradi?

tion existed in a "pure" and "changeless" form'(8). There is nothing new in this

assertion of historicity or situatedness, but it is still a useful rejoinder to the nostal?

gic or simplified versions of history which are still available and used. But if the

clear political agenda of nationalist historians of a particular type is rejected here,

then what is the more opaque political perspective which shapes the views of the

editors of this collection?

One evident aim, which the essays included in the text certainly achieve, is the

radical attempt to make Irish linguistic history less two-dimensional. Rather than

the dualistic vision of much nationalist historiography, which sees Irish cultural his?

tory as essentially a contest between Irish and English language cultures, the editors

stress the long legacy of complex linguistic and cultural exchange in Ireland. From

the pre-Celtic languages, the various dialects of the Celtic invaders, the integration

of Latin along with Christianity, through to the languages of the Scandinavians, and

those of the post-conquest invaders -

varieties of French, Occitan, Welsh, Flemish

and English ?

the picture is one of contact, mixing, and hybridity, rather than of

isolation, purity, and essentialism. Such a revision is necessary, historically precise,

and welcome; the view of Irish culture as closed and self-sufficient served a partic?

ular political end and its usefulness has long passed. But what of the account of Ireland's cultural history

as open, 'mixed',

'hybridised', marked by 'cultural contact' and 'permeability', 'linguistic interface',

'intertextuality' and 'interplay'? Given that it is admitted that versions of the past

must be determined in part by their own historicity, then what is the political view?

point which underpins this account? The answer, as with much revisionist thought,

is that it is a type of liberalism which masquerades as radicalism. In fact in this case

it is a form of cultural history which sees heteroglot history as the truth which lies

CROWLEY, 'Contests', Irish Review 33 (2005) 157



underneath the distorted accounts of those who insist only on

particular traditions

and exclusive narratives. In one sense of course this general argument is true, and it

is one of the great legacies of the work of Bakhtin (the indirect source of such a

model) that we can acknowledge this. But in the version of Irish linguistic and cul?

tural history which the introduction proposes, this insight is stripped of its radical

import. What is missing is Bakhtin s stress not simply on the underlying dialogism of culture and language, but on the fact that dialogism is the object of constant

political and historical conflict; that there are, to use Bakhtin's terms, endless con?

tests between centripetal and centrifugal forces (monologism and authority against

diversity and plurality) which produce very specific results in the histories of lan?

guages and cultures. In the editors' history it seems at times as though various

travellers brought their languages and resources to Ireland simply in order to engage

in cultural contact and exchange and to provide later artists with the means to avail

themselves of'easy give and take across language boundaries and between popula?

tions' (11). In a common reflex, the realm of Irish high culture (described as the

result of blending a

'complex linguistic and cultural heritage into an autonomous

whole' (19)) is made to stand for the nation itself. In that pluralist and liberal space

'asymmetries are acknowledged, exploited, transcended, remembered, assumed, and

forgotten'; 'two cultural traditions' (two?) have mingled and enriched each other

mutually in the formation of a new tradition. Well in that realm, perhaps, the

inequalities may be noted and forgotten, recalled yet transcended, but beyond the

'autonomous whole' of culture things are a bit more

complicated.

It is important to re-assert the fact that Ireland's history has been one of multi

culturalism and multi-lingualism and to state that the process of the negotiation of

cultural difference has been one of its major achievements. But that achievement is

lessened if the hard, complex and often bitter struggles which were required to

allow that to happen are reduced to intertextual exchange and contact; innovation

wasn't a result of choice but necessity. No invading people went to Ireland to lend

or borrow books and languages; they went for particular political, material and eco?

nomic purposes and brought their cultural modes with them as practical facts rather

than as a means to enrich or impoverish the traditions of those already there. In the

history which we inhabit cultural difference is more often than not a result of con?

flict rather than of equality, and multiculturalism, while in one sense simply part of

being human, is also a complex social state which is produced by struggle. Cultural

boundaries are often far from being permeable, and, as Friel warned in Translations,

sometimes 'you don't cross those borders casually'. It is that sense which is lacking

from the view of Irish cultural history presented here; despite noting it, the editors

ignore the implications of the fact that one of the etymological meanings of'tradi?

tion' is 'surrender' (another is 'betrayal').

That reservation apart, the editors offer intelligent and perceptive comments on

various aspects of the working and re-workings of language and tradition in Ireland

and point to the analytical lessons which may be used in other contexts. The collec?

tion which they have put together is an interesting and lively, if occasionally uneven, set of essays, some of which do in fact demonstrate the conflictual and

158 CROWLEY, Xontests', Irish Review 33 (2005)



fraught nature of the history under consideration. More familiar types of literary and historical essays are presented in C?il?n Owens's discussion of Stephen Dedalus as a word-maker belonging to dual traditions - Irish fili as well as English poet,

while Joanne Findon's illuminating account of the political significance of Yeats'

alterations to the source text for The Only Jealousy ofEmer (the medieval tale Serglige Co Culainn) is marred merely by a lapse into precisely the type of bio-criticism as

an explanation of the play which she herself warns against. Thomas Dillon Red

shaw gives a traditional though stimulating reading of Montague's use of the

'severed head' motif as a focus of three central themes: the failure to return, the loss

of a language, and the breakdown of a culture. In 'Interpretations and Translations of

Irish Traditional Music' Sally K. Sommers Smith provides an important attempt to

debunk several dominant myths about the form and offers perceptive comments on

contemporary traditional music which shed light on Hobsbawm s tradition versus

custom model. Catherine McKenna's discussion of Irish expatriates and hagiogra

phy in the seventeenth century is a signal reminder of the role of Latin as a

language central to the effort to create a particular image of Ireland (insula sancto?

rum) for nationalist purposes. And Declan Kiberd's account of McGahern's Amongst

Women is full of the clever, informed and precise insights which we might expect,

though the tendency to use epic style ('whenever a world is about to disappear, a

poet emerges to utter it, and through that poet it achieves a comprehensive articu?

lation') in an epic mode ('McGahern is the major contemporary inheritor of a

durable mode of Irish writing: an artist of the self-enclosed world') does little for

the overall effect.

The pick of the essays are those which focus on language, tradition and culture as

sites of conflict and difficulty as well as transmission and negotiation. Though Helen

Fulton's reading of hegemonic discourses in Friel's Freedom of the City appears a

little dated (it refers to an account of the contemporary Gaelic revival written in

1992) and her use of Gramsci might have been helped by reference to Bourdieu's

work on language and symbolic power, it is nonetheless a refreshing interpretation

which reads the play against the grain of much of the criticism of Friel's work. Jere? my Lowe's 'Contagious Violence and the Spectacle of Death in T?in B? C?ailnge is a model of a combined traditional and theoretical approach to a text in history

which renders a re-reading of a

literary representation of social ambivalence

towards the glory and horror of violent heroism; its considered yet provocative crit?

icism poses important questions. Michael Cronin's account of the roles of

interpreters in Ireland provides an exemplary and significant literary and historical

perspective on the importance of the transmission of languages in history. It ends by

noting the contemporary and pressing problems faced by refugees and asylum seek?

ers in an increasingly multicultural and multi-lingual Dublin. Gordon McCoy and

Camille O'Reilly's 'Essentialising Ulster? The Ulster-Scots Language Movement', is

an admirable piece of historical criticism which provides an introduction to the lat?

est form of cultural nationalism to appear in Ireland, that of the Ulster-Scots

movement, with particular reference to the language/dialect/language variety

Ullans. The strokes between these terms mark the site of conflict: is this the

CROWLEY, 'Contests', Irish Review 33 (2005) 159



language of a beleaguered ethnic minority, an obscure rural dialect, or a form of

language whose major use is its role in political debates about identity and cultural

resources?

Complex and difficult questions will always He at the heart of any discussion of

language and tradition in Ireland. This collection is an important contribution to a

continuing and necessary debate.

TONY CROWLEY

New Descriptions of the World

Cathal ? Searcaigh, Seal i Neipeal. Indreabh?n: Ci? Iar-Chonnachta, 2004. ISBN 1

902420 60 8. ?20.00.

Gabriel Rosenstock, Olann mo Mhiuil as an nGains?is, Indreabh?n: Ci? Iar-Chon?

nachta, 2003. ISBN 1 902420 78 0. ?15.00

Marco Polo's book, which we all know about from school, but which many of us,

myself included, have never read, is probably the exemplary travel book in Euro?

pean literature: it told the west about the east. In the past year or so, this essential

service is now being provided for the Irish reader (by which I mean the reader of

Irish) by a number of handsomely produced books from Ci? Iar-chonnachta, two

of which are being reviewed here.

Cathal ? Searcaigh's Seal i Neipeal is a rich sensuous personal account of a recent

visit to Nepal, trekking from Katmandu northwards to Namche and Lukla and the

slopes of Everest, much of the time in the company of two companions Ang Wong Chuu, a

Sherpa, and Pemba Thamang from Gatlang.

From the start the traveller was lucky in his companions

? if luck it is. Even

before leaving Katmandu he was fortunate to become the victim of, as he calls it, a

clash of cultures, when he bumped into another young man. 'Tourists walk with

their heads up. We walk with our heads down,' says Prem Timalsina, laughing at

Cathal's apology. The young man becomes his guide and introduces him to the

wonders, curiosities, and everyday life of his home. But Prem is not just a guide, he

becomes a friend and his personality is as much part of the account as the stories

he tells.

This is to be a constant feature of the book: Cathal ? Searcaigh allows the peo?

ple he is with as well as those he encounters - be they living in the country or

visitors like himself? to open the door to his discoveries and to point him in the

direction of new vistas and different ways of life. Meeting people is one of the joys of the book: from Ganesh, the hungry thirteen year old he meets ransacking dust?

bins in Katmandu with 'New York! New York!' displayed across his purple tee-shirt, to the confidence trickster in Deurali; from the friend of Lar Cassidy from

Monkstown he meets in Kenja to the Australian lady who sees ghosts; from the

160 MAC COIL, 'New Descriptions of the World', Irish Review 33 (2005)



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