Irish literature. Early Irish literature was written in the Irish, or Gaelic, language. The English language was slowly introduced into Ireland following the arrival in the 1100’s of Norman landowners and English artisans and tradespeople. However, it was not until the 1800’s that the use of English became so widespread that it overtook Irish as the language spoken by the majority of people on a daily basis.
Despite repeated attempts to revive the use of Irish in the late 1800’s and again beginning in the 1920’s, nearly all Irish people now speak English as their first language, and most authors write in English. Only a small percentage of the population now speaks Irish fluently. As a result, there are two separate literary traditions in Ireland, though they have many points of crossover.
Ireland has produced many major writers. Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, George Bernard Shaw, and William Butler Yeats have been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Other well-known Irish writers include Elizabeth Bowen, Maria Edgeworth, Brian Friel, Lady Augusta Gregory, James Joyce, Sean O’Casey, Sydney Owenson (also known as Lady Morgan), Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, John Millington Synge, and Oscar Wilde. The Booker Prize , at one time called the Man Booker Prize, is a prestigious award for novels written in English. It has been won by the Irish-born and Irish-based authors John Banville, Anna Burns, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Iris Murdoch, and DBC Pierre.
Early Irish literature
Some Irish literature was written before the coming of Christianity in the early A.D. 400’s. However, no examples have survived except in later versions. The Irish developed a type of alphabet called ogam, which survives only in brief stone inscriptions. Thus, early Irish culture was passed on not through written texts but through oral transmission. A hereditary class of professional poets called the filid put early Ireland’s customs, history, and laws into verse, which made these long lists of facts easier to recall. Such poetry had no clear rhyme or rhythm, but the repetition of similar sounds and metaphors (figures of speech that suggest comparisons) made it poetic. At the same time, wandering minstrels called bards composed satire and poetry to celebrate special occasions. Christian missionaries, including Palladius and Saint Patrick, first came to Ireland in the early 400’s. They brought not only Christianity but also the art of writing in the Roman alphabet, which the Irish adopted. Christianity grew during the 400’s and 500’s, but it emerged as a major influence in Irish culture only in the 600’s.
Some missionaries to Ireland, along with Irish Christians, established monasteries that became centers of teaching and learning. As a result, written Irish literature began with religious works. Many Latin works written in Irish monasteries survive. “Amra Choluim Cille” (“The Eulogy of Saint Columba”), composed in the late 500’s, is possibly the earliest poem written in Irish. It praises the Irish monk who was exiled from Ireland and helped bring Christianity to Scotland. A famous poem of the 800’s, “Pangur Bán,” is the story of a monk and his cat. It was discovered in the margins of a religious text. Monasteries also helped produce the writing of historical accounts of ancient Ireland.
Irish literature, 700-1600
Only a few examples of Irish literature written before the 600’s still exist. But much that dates from about 700 to 1200 has been preserved. This includes folk tales, legends about saints, and poetry.
Heroic tales, romances, and sagas
made up a major part of early Irish literature. Most of these works consist of verse set into long passages of narrative prose. These works were based on legends and were probably written down from the 700’s to the 1200’s. However, many were probably composed centuries before they were written and were handed down from one generation of poets to the next. Modern scholars classify these works into four major groups of related stories called cycles: the mythological cycle, the Ulster cycle, the Fionn cycle, and the historical cycle, also called the king cycle.
The mythological cycle is preserved in a collection of myths called the Lebor Gabala (Book of Conquests) edited in the 1000’s. The cycle describes the invasion of Ireland by five supernatural races before the beginning of history. The most important of these races was the Tuatha De Danann. The Tuatha used their magic powers to win battles, to court lovers, and to perform superhuman feats of courage. A richness of imagination characterizes the best mythological tales. In Aisling Oenguso (The Dream of Oengus), the hero turns into a swan to win the love of a girl he met in a dream. In Tochmarc Étaine (The Wooing of Étaine), the heroine is transformed into a fly.
The Ulster cycle relates the deeds of the heroes of ancient Ulster, the northeastern province of Ireland. The tales center on the court of King Conchobar mac Nessa, who is said to have ruled Ulster in the early 100’s. The best-known Ulster epic is Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley). It describes the efforts of Queen Medb (also known as Maeve) of Connacht, the western province, to take the famous brown bull of Cooley from Ulster. Cuchulainn, a young hero, single-handedly fights off the invaders until the queen’s army finally captures the bull. King Conchobar’s army then comes to Cuchulainn’s rescue and helps defeat the invaders. Like many of the Ulster poems, the Táin is rich in description of the landscape.
The Fionn cycle, also known as the Fenian cycle, contains stories about the Fianna, a band of mythical Irish warriors. According to legend, the Fianna roamed throughout Ireland about 200, led by chief Fionn mac Cumhaill, also called Finn MacCool. This cycle includes ballads, romantic tales, and sagas. Acallam na Senórach (The Colloquy of the Old Men), composed about 1200, is one of the most famous stories in the Fionn cycle. It describes the accidental meeting of Saint Patrick and a Fianna warrior named Caoilte. In a tale that blends Irish myth and Christian history, Caoilte entertains the saint with legends about the courageous deeds of Fianna heroes. 
The historical, or king, cycle deals with events and people from the 500’s to the 700’s, though the tales were composed up to 300 years later. The most famous of the tales in this cycle, Buile Shuibhne (The Madness of Sweeney) relates the aftermath of the historical battle of Mag Rath in the early 600’s. Sweeney is driven mad by the noise of battle. He spends many years wandering in the wilderness before entering a monastery, where he tells his story so that it might be preserved in writing.
Other major works of the 1100’s to the 1600’s include the Dindseanchas, a body of prose and verse that tells the history of places and place names. Mostly fictional, the writings provide a detailed description of the landscape, culture, and politics of Ireland at that time.
In the 1500’s, there was a gradual decline in support of the filid, who relied on noble families with an interest in Irish culture to support them. This decline was spurred by the conquest of Ireland under King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I of England and the arrival in Ireland of greater numbers of English settlers. The defeat of the Irish chieftains early in the 1600’s furthered the decline.
In 1567, the first book to be printed in Irish was published in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was a translation of a religious text.
Modern works in Irish
After 1600, use of the Irish language declined in cities and towns. The impact of English rule and increasing commercial ties between Ireland and Great Britain and its colonies contributed to the decline. By the mid-1700’s, educated and wealthy Irish people spoke primarily English. Poetry continued to be written in Irish, but the formal style of the filid was overshadowed by informal, bardic poetry. Geoffrey Keating kept Irish traditions alive in his popular book Foras Feasa ar Éirinn, a history of Ireland from the earliest times to the arrival of the Normans in the 1100’s. It was written in Irish about 1634. Keating’s goal was to defend Ireland against accusations of barbarism and backwardness.
Political turmoil in Ireland during the 1600’s led to the development of the caoineadh. A caoineadh is a poem of lament for the loss of family and friends or the loss of one’s reputation. Aodhagán Ó Rathaille and Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, both poets from Munster, the southern province, also developed the aisling. The aisling is a form of poetry in which the wandering poet meets a fair maiden representing Ireland. She expresses sorrow over her fate at the hands of the English and longs for the return to the throne of the Stuart kings. The Stuart kings were considered to be allies of the Irish.
The 1700’s saw the appearance of two of the most celebrated Irish poets. Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill expressed grief over the political murder of her husband in her poem of the 1770’s, Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire (Lament for Art O’Leary). Brian Merriman’s satirical poem Cuírt an Mheán-Oíche (The Midnight Court), written about 1780, criticized the reluctance of many Irish men to marry. The clever, sarcastic wit of this work rivals the satire of the famous English poet Alexander Pope.
By the mid-1800’s, most Irish authors were writing in English, though the Irish language was far from dead. In 1893, Douglas Hyde, a poet who later served as Ireland’s first president, founded the Gaelic League, or Conradh na Gaeilge. The league worked to reestablish Irish as the national language and to promote interest in Irish literature and culture. Hyde’s efforts, though they did little to revive the spoken language, encouraged the growth of a modern Irish-language literary movement.
Authors who wrote in Irish in the early 1900’s included Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Peig Sayers, Máirtín Ó Direáin, and Máirtín Ó Cadhain, all born on the west coast, where Irish continues to be spoken today. Ó Cadhain’s 1948 novel, Cré na Cille, is one of the most important, experimental, and difficult pieces of fiction written in Ireland during the 1900’s. Literature in Irish experienced a revival during the late 1900’s and early 2000’s. Many poets emerged as leading voices. They include Máire mhac an tSaoi, Gabriel Rosenstock, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Important prose writers include Seamas Mac Annaidh and Micheál Ó Conghaile.
Early works in English
As early as the 1300’s, a few Irish authors began to write in English. The practice of writing in English became more common as English political influence in Ireland increased. By the 1700’s, Irish-born writers were producing some of the most enduring works of the time. Scholars have debated whether this writing can count as Irish because the intended audience was English and the themes were only rarely Irish.
Among Irish prose writers of the 1700’s, Jonathan Swift is the best known. Although Swift is often considered an English author, he was born in Dublin. In addition, he wrote his most important satires during the 32 years that he was dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Gulliver’s Travels (1726) ranks as his most famous work. It tells of the four voyages of a ship’s doctor, later a ship’s captain, to several make-believe lands. Swift used the inhabitants of these strange lands to ridicule foolish human behavior as well as English politics.
During the 1700’s, many of the greatest Irish-born playwrights, including Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, won fame by writing for the English theater. Their works contain little that identifies the writers as Irish. The first plays for the English theater to be recognizably Irish were romantic melodramas written in the 1800’s. Dion Boucicault became the first popular playwright to portray life from an Irish viewpoint, using Irish settings and sympathetic Irish characters. His plays, which were very popular in London and New York City, include The Colleen Bawn (1860) and The Shaughraun (1875).
In the 1800’s, Irish narrative prose writers began to draw on Irish themes and characters. They were influenced by patriotism and a renewed interest in the past. Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800) portrays the immoral lives of Irish landlords who wasted their wealth. In The Wild Irish Girl (1806), Sydney Owenson attempted to reconcile the class and religious differences that separated people living in Ireland.
Irish poetry also began to look to the past for its roots and direction. Poets drew on the work in the late 1700’s of Charlotte Brooke, who brought heroic poems and odes to an English audience through her translations in Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789). Thomas Moore, who became known as the national poet of Ireland, adopted Irish settings and subject matter in his verse. In Irish Melodies (1808-1834), Moore set his Romantic, patriotic poems to traditional Irish folk songs. Thomas Davis, James Clarence Mangan, Lady Jane Wilde (writing under the name “Speranza”), and other Irish poets also wrote patriotic poetry during this era. Many of these poems were collected in the book The Spirit of the Nation (1843).
The Irish literary revival
During the late 1800’s, a group of Irish writers attempted to create a uniquely Irish literature in the English language. Building on the writing of the early 1800’s that used Irish history as its primary source, the writers based their works on early myths and legends. The leading writers of this movement included the playwright Lady Augusta Gregory, the poet George Russell (also known as AE), the poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, and the playwright John Millington Synge. A key feature of this movement, in addition to the study of folklore, was the use of the language of the common people.
Yeats and Lady Gregory helped establish the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899. They sought to encourage the writing and performance of modern plays that drew on aspects of Irish life. The theater, later known as the Abbey Theatre, became Ireland’s national theater. It produced many of the most brilliant and controversial plays of the 1900’s, though some people have criticized the movement’s attachment to traditional plays and its exclusion of women playwrights and actors.
Synge was a master of both tragedy and dark comedy. His peasant characters speak a vivid, poetic language that Synge devised. It is a mixture of the dialogue of English spoken in Ireland and direct translation of words and phrases from the Irish language.
Synge’s best-known works include Riders to the Sea (1904), a tragic one-act play set on an island off the west coast, and The Playboy of the Western World (1907), a comedy about a young man who believes he has just murdered his father. The young man is welcomed and celebrated by the isolated community where he seeks shelter. The play, which shattered the idea that rural communities were composed of simple, law-abiding folk, caused scandal and rioting when it was first staged. Synge spent much time traveling through the Irish-speaking districts on the west coast, and his published and edited diary of his time on the Aran Islands (1907) is a masterpiece.
Many critics consider Yeats the greatest poet of his time. Yeats’s writing reflects his fascination with Irish folk tales early in his career and with Symbolism and the supernatural later. His first major work, The Wanderings of Oisin (1889), is a mystical narrative poem based on the adventures of a legendary hero of the Fianna. Yeats wrote some of his most striking poetry during the last 10 years of his life. He also wrote The Countess Cathleen (1891), one of the first plays produced by the Irish Literary Theatre. Yeats was fascinated by Asia, and his work is filled with references to Indian and Japanese literature and philosophy.
Modern Irish literature
The Irish literary revival dominated the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. However, some Irish authors wrote works that did not turn to a mythical past. After the early 1900’s, many authors, including William Butler Yeats, discarded the revival’s forms and themes. They began to produce works that were either more abstract or more realistic.
Drama.
The Irish-born playwrights Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw lived in England and gained their reputation with witty comedies for the English theater. Wilde is known for his colorful manner and his sharp wit. His style is perhaps most successfully displayed in the comedy The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Shaw revealed his strong ties to his homeland in the play John Bull’s Other Island (1904).
Several Irish playwrights wrote about the guerrilla warfare that raged during the War of Independence (1919-1921) and the Irish Civil War (1922-1923). For example, Sean O’Casey created vivid, realistic dramas that take place around the time of the Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War. The Abbey Theatre produced two of his early tragicomedies, The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and Juno and the Paycock (1924). Riots broke out during performances of one of his best works, The Plough and the Stars (1926). Many people believed that the play’s antiwar theme insulted the heroes of the Irish rebellion and slandered Irish womanhood. The play points up the tragic difference between heroic language and actual violence during the struggle for independence and in its aftermath. Some of O’Casey’s later plays call for a radical transformation of society through communism to improve the lives of the poor.
Samuel Beckett was one of the major writers of Irish, and world, theater in the 1900’s. His plays and comic novels may be difficult to interpret because of their challenging and unconventional nature, but his brilliant and precise writing can also be immensely funny and engaging. Beckett has been identified as one of the major figures in the Theater of the Absurd. This movement developed in Europe after the end of World War II (1939-1945), a war that destroyed by violence many of the certainties of Western civilization. It is this troubled world that Beckett tries to represent in such plays as Waiting for Godot (1949), Endgame (1957), and Happy Days (1960). 
Political themes dominated much Irish drama during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Brendan Behan, a colorful personality, served several prison terms for his anti-British activities as a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). His two best plays, The Quare Fellow (1954) and The Hostage (1958), reflect his rebellious spirit and strong social conscience. John B. Keane’s Many Young Men of Twenty (1961) deals realistically with the massive emigration from the Irish countryside to the United Kingdom and the United States. The Field (1965) details the tragic effects of difficulties over landownership in a poor country.
Brian Friel became a major voice in Irish drama with Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964). The play centers on a young Irishman who leaves his family to immigrate to the United States. Translations (1980) deals with the cultural legacy of the mapping of Ireland in the 1830’s. Friel portrays the project as a broad act of cultural destruction. Thomas Kilroy wrote about the breakdown of community, the isolation of the individual, and the futility of political rebellion in The Death and Resurrection of Mr. Roche (1968). Frank McGuinness explored cultural and political tensions in Northern Ireland in Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (1985). Other important playwrights included Sebastian Barry and Tom Murphy.
A new generation of Irish playwrights achieved critical and popular success in the late 1900’s and early 2000’s. Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats (1998) is a dark, supernatural translation of the Greek myth of Medea relocated in an Irish bog (marsh). Conor McPherson’s The Weir (1997) and The Seafarer (2006) established him as an important new voice. Martin McDonagh’s black comedies about life in the west of Ireland draw on the tradition of Synge. Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs (1996) and The Walworth Farce (2006) demonstrate his insight and talent as a writer of comedy and farce. Abbie Spallen’s Pumpgirl (2006) is based on a series of monologues by its three characters, who find themselves in a love triangle.
Fiction.
James Joyce was one of the most influential writers of the 1900’s. Like many other Irish authors, Joyce lived in self-imposed exile from Ireland. His first major work, a short-story collection called Dubliners (1914), offers a realistic picture of dullness among the Irish middle class. In his autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Joyce at times used an experimental style called stream of consciousness. This technique involves recording the characters’ thoughts exactly as they occur, without comment by the author.
Joyce proved his mastery of the stream of consciousness style in Ulysses (1922). In this novel, he drew parallels between the adventures of an Irish advertising salesman and the wanderings of Ulysses (Odysseus) in the Odyssey, the epic poem by the ancient Greek poet Homer. Finnegans Wake (1939) explores the dreams, fears, and secret thoughts of a Dublin innkeeper and his family. Joyce attempted to link their experiences to all humanity through a complex pattern of symbols. He drew these symbols from Irish history, literature, mythology, songs, slang, and other sources.
Liam O’Flaherty’s psychological novels, such as The Informer (1925), explore the attitudes of poor Irish farmers and city dwellers in a lyrical but realistic style. Frank O’Connor wrote short stories noted for their realism and sensitivity. His collection Guests of the Nation (1931) captures the rhythms and sounds of Irish rural life. Flann O’Brien (the pen name of Brian O’Nolan) wrote satirical novels about Irish life, including At Swim-Two-Birds (1939). His work ranks among the sharpest and clearest social criticism of the time.
Elizabeth Bowen’s novel The Last September (1929) tells about two Anglo-Irish Protestant families during the War of Independence. They do not recognize that their world is collapsing around them. Sean O’Faolain explored the reactions of everyday Irish people to personal crises, to the Catholic clergy, and to political struggles. He wrote novels and short stories, including the collection The Man Who Invented Sin (1948). Kate O’Brien was a novelist who was also a journalist and travel writer. Her best novels include Without My Cloak (1931) and The Land of Spices (1941). Like most of her fiction, both are set in Irish middle-class society, especially the place of women in that society. 
William Trevor’s fiction deals with marginal, eccentric people struggling with their outsider status. The Story of Lucy Gault (2002) portrays Protestant former landowners in independent Ireland after their land has been redistributed and the basis of their power taken away. Trevor’s realistic short stories appear in his collection The News from Ireland (1986). Edna O’Brien’s first novel, The Country Girls (1960), deals frankly with sex in the highly conservative Ireland of that time. As a result, the novel was banned but has remained influential into the 2000’s. O’Brien’s House of Splendid Isolation (1994) is a sensitive view of the impact of the political conflict in Northern Ireland.
Important fiction writers of the late 1900’s and early 2000’s included John McGahern, Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, John Banville, Colm Tóibín, and Sebastian Barry. McGahern’s novels are grimly realistic portraits of the beauty and violence of rural life. They include Amongst Women (1990) and That They May Face the Rising Sun (2001). Doyle wrote about the violent history of Ireland in the early 1900’s in A Star Called Henry (1999). He described life in modern working class Dublin in The Commitments (1989), The Snapper (1990), and The Van (1991). Enright earned recognition for exploring Irish family life with sharp wit. Examples include The Wig My Father Wore (1995) and The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002).
Banville, Tóibín, and Barry are stylists, writing careful, beautiful prose. Banville’s early historical novels about European scientists are deeply scholarly. Mefisto (1986) and The Book of Evidence (1989) are more psychological, exploring immorality as a human trait. Banville wrote Mrs. Osmond (2017), a sequel to The Portrait of a Lady by the American novelist Henry James (published in 1880 and 1881). Tóibín’s fiction also reflects the influence of James in the psychological depth of such novels as The Master (2004), Brooklyn (2009), and Nora Webster (2014).
Sebastian Barry portrayed the conflict between personal life and political life in modern Ireland in The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998). The story tells about a young Irishman who accepts a job with the British-led Royal Irish constabulary as Ireland begins its struggle for independence. Annie Dunne (2002) is a moving portrait of an aging Irish woman in the late 1950’s, as her life on her cousin’s impoverished farm is threatened by impending changes.
In the early 2000’s, a number of Irish novelists earned recognition for their experimental fiction, which challenges traditional notions of fiction writing. These writers included Kevin Barry, Sara Baume, Eimear MacBride, and Mike McCormack.
Poetry.
Irish poets of the mid-1900’s also drew material from uniquely Irish sources. Austin Clarke, one of the greatest poets in the years after Yeats, borrowed technical features from classical Irish-language poetry to produce fresh new forms. He satirized social and religious hypocrisy in such collections as Ancient Lights (1955). Patrick Kavanagh was also a fierce critic of Ireland after independence. His lyrical poetry in a simple, straightforward style, such as The Great Hunger (1942), deals with the harsh realities of poor Irish farmers. Thomas Kinsella made a number of significant translations of Irish-language literature, including the epic Táin Bó Cuailnge (1969). He is also a poet of urban Ireland, writing beautifully about Dublin life in the 1970’s. Other leading poets of the late 1900’s and early 2000’s include Eavan Boland, Martin Dyar, Vona Groarke, Paula Meehan, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Caitríona O’Reilly.
A group of Northern Ireland poets emerged during the late 1960’s and 1970’s. Known as the Northern School, these poets responded in various ways to the political violence in Northern Ireland. A similarity of form as well as subject matter links the work of Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, and Seamus Heaney. Paul Muldoon, a Northern Ireland poet who has lived in the United States since 1987, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for Moy Sand and Gravel (2003). Their legacy lives on in the work of a new generation of Northern Irish poets, including Ciarán Carson, Leontia Flynn, Medbh McGuckian, and Sinéad Morrissey.
