Controversies are high drama: in them people speak lines as colorful and passionate as any recited on stage. In the years before the 1916 Rising, public battles were fought in Ireland over French paintings, a maverick priest, Dublin slum children, and theatrical censorship. Controversy was “popular,” wrote George Moore, especially “when accompanied with the breaking of chairs.”
In her new book, Lucy McDiarmid offers a witty and illuminating account of these and other controversies, antagonistic exchanges with no single or no obvious high ground. They merit attention, in her view, not because the Irish are more combative than other peoples, but because controversies functioned centrally in the debate over Irish national identity. They offered to everyone direct or vicarious involvement in public life: the question they articulated was not “Irish Ireland or English Ireland” but “whose Irish Ireland” would dominate when independence was finally achieved.
The Irish Art of Controversy recovers the histories of “the man who died for the language,” Father O’Hickey, who defied the bishops in his fight for Irish Gaelic; Lady Gregory and Bernard Shaw’s defense of the Abbey Theatre against Dublin Castle; and the 1913 “Save the Dublin Kiddies" campaign, in which priests attacked socialists over custody of Catholic children. The notorious Roger Casement—British consul, Irish rebel, humanitarian, poet—forms the subject of the last chapter, which offers the definitive commentary on the long-lasting controversy over his diaries.
McDiarmid’s use of archival sources, especially little-known private letters, indicates the way intimate exchanges, as well as cartoons, ballads, and editorials, may exist within a public narrative. In its original treatment of the rich material Yeats called “intemperate speech,” The Irish Art of Controversy suggests new ways of thinking about modern Ireland and about controversy’s bluff, bravado, and improvisational flair.
Reviews
“Rather than tell a familiar political tale of oppressors and oppressed, [McDiarmid] focuses on the dramatic subtleties of the domestic fight for control of the discourse of nationality. . . . Written with an objectivity of approach that reflects extensive research, with a strong narrative line that is maintained by a personable and sometimes even exclamatory style,
The Irish Art of Controversy is an excellent referee for those who already know something of these fights, as well as for those new to the Irish cultural ringside.”—John Kenny,
Times Literary Supplement, 23 & 30 December 2005
“McDiarmid’s book . . . delivers an enjoyable, readable account of five 20th-century Irish spats. . . .
The Irish Art of Controversy is an impressively researched, admirably intelligent study.”—Terry Eagleton,
Irish Times, 25 June 2005
“Some of Ireland’s best-known national characters make appearances here—Lady Gregory, George Bernard Shaw, Hugh Lane, Patrick Pearse, W. B. Yeats—and the work brings fresh relevance to history by demonstrating the impact of these controversies on today’s society. This work is a treasure trove for scholars of Irish history and a surprisingly lively read for the general reader.”—Noreen Bowden,
Irish Emigrant Book Review, 28 October 2005
“McDiarmid’s book is a masterly survey of one of the most complex periods of modern European history. The thoroughness and extent of the research is astonishing. . . . The Irish Art of Controversy has significant implications for the ways we think about language, power, interpretation, and culture in the period that gave rise to Gregory, Shaw, Yeats, Synge, Joyce, and O’Casey.”—Marc C. Conner,
Irish Literary Supplement, Fall 2005
“In writing a book about Irish controversies, McDiarmid faced a daunting
challenge in narrowing her selections to a manageable, representative set,
given the preponderance of cultural and political battles to choose from
during these years. Her choices are carefully balanced between revisiting
well-known high literary affairs and introducing readers to cultural battles
that deserve to be more widely studied. . . . McDiarmid brings to her investigation enviably deep, rich knowledge of the Irish Revival, building on her influential literary scholarship on Yeats, Gregory, and Casement. . . . In
The Irish Art of Controversy, Lucy McDiarmid provides the sustained, masterful intellectual engagement that one would expect of a leading critic in Irish studies. She possesses the persuasive, illuminating power to reshape multiple debates about high cultural nationalism, language studies, sexuality, censorship, and socialism, to name but a few of the key topics studied here. As admirable, she has the narrative command and stylistic flourish to educate and edify non-specialists too. Very few scholars today attempt, let alone achieve, such balance.”—Karen Steele,
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews, April 2006
"McDiarmid discovers the drama of national identity enacted on the 'small site[s]' of particular controversies. Her case, built on finely detailed examples that blend fieldwork and archival study, is extremely compelling. . . . The book transcends its putative subject matter, however, to take on the larger history of modern Irish identity, eventually finding 'the Ireland of Mary Robinson and Sinéad O'Connor' in the pre-1916 Ireland of Casement, Yeats, and others. . . . The compact timeline of the controversies' origins, 1908–1916, belies a project of far greater scope. In most cases, the controversy outlives the controversialist, and McDiarmid traces the posthumous history of each case right up to the present day. . . allow[ing] new light to be shed on old arguments."—Julian Hanna,
Modernism/modernity, September 2006
"Lucy McDiarmid brilliantly identifies five dramas of cultural change in Ireland in the years before independence, narrating them in all their complexity, tragedy, and comedy. Vividly original, written with verve, wit, and meticulous scholarship, The Irish Art of Controversy will be essential reading for anyone who cares about the Irish history, literature, or politics of the last hundred years."—Angela Bourke
"The Irish Art of Controversy is what serious scholarship should be: meticulously informed, lucid, original. I enjoyed every page."—Samuel Hynes, Princeton University
"Lucy McDiarmid's studies of Yeats and Lady Gregory have already established her among the most illuminating interpreters of the turbulent Ireland of a century ago. Here she casts further light on the period through her riveting account of five major controversies, ranging from the row over the Hugh Lane Bequest to the bitter conflict over the reputation of Roger Casement, that excited that extraordinary generation."— J. J. Lee, New York University
