"Strangers in the house": twentieth century revisions of Irish literary and cultural identity

Abstract

This thesis, Strangers in the House, illuminates how "strangers in the house"--unconventional women, Travellers, emigrants and immigrants--have made significant contributions to the evolving traditions of Irish literature and culture. I trace the literary and creative contributions of groups that were silenced during the early twentieth-century nation-building project to review the impact of the Irish Revival, from the politics of Arthur Griffith and Eamon de Valera to the writings of Yeats, Gregory and Synge, on the establishment of an "authentic" Irish identity. I draw on scholarship that establishes Ireland as a postcolonial nation, suggesting that contemporary identity is closely linked to the national, religious and gender expectations reinforced during the periods of colonialism and decolonization. My scholarship considers individuals who continue to be peripheral in the "reimagining" of what it means to be Irish in a post-Celtic Tiger, E.U. Ireland.