Remembering the Revolution

Dissent, Culture, and Nationalism in the Irish Free State

Frances Flanagan

Oxford Historical Monographs

A new study of Irish nationalist intellectuals who wrote critically about the Irish revolution
Offers a rich, intimate perspective on four important, but largely neglected Irish writers: Eimar O'Duffy, P. S. O'Hegarty, George Russell, and Desmond Ryan
Integrates nationalist debates in Ireland with international arguments about secularism, Western civilisation, warfare, and social and cultural degeneration
Illuminates and redefines the revisionist/counter-revisionist schism in Irish history
Provides a new context for understanding influential Irish writers of the period, including W.B. Yeats, Sean O'Casey, Sean O'Faolain, and Frank O'Connor

Remembering the Revolution

Dissent, Culture, and Nationalism in the Irish Free State

Frances Flanagan

Description

Remembering the Irish Revolution chronicles the ways in which the Irish revolution was remembered in the first two decades of Irish independence. While tales of heroism and martyrdom dominated popular accounts of the revolution, a handful of nationalists reflected on the period in more ambivalent terms. For them, the freedoms won in revolution came with great costs: the grievous loss of civilian lives, the brutalisation of Irish society, and the loss of hope for a united and prosperous independent nation. To many nationalists, their views on the revolution were traitorous. For others, they were the courageous expression of some uncomfortable truths.

This volume explores these struggles over revolutionary memory through the lives of four significant, but under-researched nationalist intellectuals: Eimar O'Duffy, P. S. O'Hegarty, George Russell, and Desmond Ryan. It provides a lively account of their controversial critiques of the Irish revolution, and an intimate portrait of the friends, enemies, institutions and influences that shaped them.

Based on wide-ranging archival research, Remembering the Irish Revolution puts the history of Irish revolutionary memory in a transnational context. It shows the ways in which international debates about war, human progress, and the fragility of Western civilisation were crucial in shaping the understandings of the revolution in Ireland. It provides a fresh context for analysis the major writers of the period, such as Sean O'Casey, W. B. Yeats, and Sean O'Faolain, as well as a new outlook on the genesis of the revisionist/nationalist schism that continues to resonate in Irish society today.

Remembering the Revolution

Dissent, Culture, and Nationalism in the Irish Free State

Frances Flanagan

Oxford Historical Monographs

Introduction
1:Writing the revolution in the Free State
2:Eimar O'Duffy and the Waste of 1916
3:Clean Minded Separatists and the Mob: P.S. O'Hegarty and the ambiguous victory of Sinn Fein
4:Shivering Elders and the Exploits of Youth: George Russell's interpretations of the Irish revolution
5:Remembering Sion: Desmond Ryan's therapeutic revolution
Conclusion: Dissent, disillusionment, and the nationalist ideal
Bibliography

Remembering the Revolution

Dissent, Culture, and Nationalism in the Irish Free State

Frances Flanagan

Oxford Historical Monographs

Author Information

Frances Flanagan, Research Assistant, University of Sydney

Frances Flanagan was born in Perth, Western Australia. She obtained bachelor degrees in Arts and Law from the University of Western Australia. After several years as a lawyer, she won a Commonwealth scholarship to read for a DPhil in history at the University of Oxford. She has been a senior scholar at Hertford College Oxford, a Marshall Fellow at the London Institute of Historical Research, and a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at Birkbeck, University of London. She currently works at the University of Sydney, and lives in Sydney with her husband and two daughters.

Remembering the Revolution

Dissent, Culture, and Nationalism in the Irish Free State

Frances Flanagan

Oxford Historical Monographs

Reviews and Awards

Shortlisted for the 2016 Royal Historical Society Whitfield Prize

"On a larger scale, in Remembering the Revolution: Dissent, Culture, and Nationalism in the Irish Free State, Frances Flanagan charts similar revisions through the fiction and non-fiction prose of four "nationalist intellectuals" ... close readings, informed by both political and literary history" - Lucy McDiarmid, Times Literary Supplement

"[Iemembering the Revolution] is a thought provoking and original study based on rigorous interrogation of primary source material and a close analysis of a wide range of literary material. It makes a valuable contribution to the historiography." - Mel Farrell, Irish Historical Studies

"Flanagan successfully articulates a hitherto obscure, critically self-examining, nationalist literature." - John M. Regan, Journal of Modern History

"thought-provoking and impressively researched ... [a] timely reminder that the controversies surrounding the nature of that Irish insurrectionary wave were explored by the first post-revolutionary generation with a vigour that matches any modern polemic ... a thoughtful and scholarly contribution to an understanding of a generation that tried to change the world and had to live with the consequences of failure." - Sean Ledwith, Reviews in History

"there is little doubt that Flanagan has produced a major work of modern Irish history. Remembering the Revolution illustrates the beauty of failure, showing how it contains within it the possibilities of change and insight." - Simon Prince, Twentieth Century British History

"Flanagan does an excellent job of describing her subjects' dilemmas. The book is elegantly and tightly written, and massively documented, with an excellent bibliography." - Alan J. Ward, American Historical Review

"her lively writing and significant argument should gain her readers outside the academic world." - Charles Townshend, Irish Times

"This book is a pioneering and forensic study which adds a great deal to our understanding of the Irish revolution and its ripples through Ireland after partition. In so doing, Flanagan does important work in contextualising debates over Irish culture and society in the 1920s within broader European trends, and as such, her work sits alongside Mo Moulton's recent Ireland and the Irish in Interwar England in resituating the Irish 1920s as a crucial part of a broader European malaise ... in delineating the lives of these men in the period after they had fallen into political irrelevance, Flanagan poses fundamental questions about how Irish historians have chosen narratives and chased stories; as such this book asks broader questions about the nature of historical practice which will be of relevance to all." - Erika Hanna, Contemporary British History