Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at
1:12 pm
Product Description
Wars of Words is the first comprehensive survey of the politics of language in Ireland during the colonial and post-colonial periods. Challenging received notions, Tony Crowley presents a complex, fascinating, and often surprising history which has suffered greatly in the past from over-simplification. Beginning with Henry VIII’s Act for English Order, Habit, and Language (1537) and ending with the Republic of Ireland’s Official Languages Act (2003) and the introduction of language rights under the legislation proposed by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (2004), this clear and accessible narrative follows the continuities and discontinuities of Irish history over the past five hundred years.
The major issues that have both united and divided Ireland are considered with regard to language, including ethnicity, cultural identity, religion, sovereignty, propriety, purity, memory, and authenticity. But rather than simply presenting the accepted wisdom on many of the language debates, this book re-visits the material and considers previously little-known evidence in order to offer new insights and to contest earlier accounts. The materials range from colonial state papers to the writings of Irish revolutionaries, from the work of Irish priest historians to contemporary loyalist politicians, from Gaelic dictionaries to Ulster-Scots poetry.
Wars of Words offers a reading of the crucial role language has played in Ireland’s political history. It concludes by arguing that the Belfast Agreement’s recognition that languages are ‘part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland’, will be central to the social development of the Republic and Northern Ireland. The final chapter analyses the way in which contemporary poets have used Gaelic, Hiberno-English, Ulster-English, and Ulster-Scots, as vehicles for the various voices that deman to be heard in the new societies on both sides of the border.
Wars of Words: The Politics of Language in Ireland 1537-2004
Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at
12:15 pm
Product Description
This is a major assessment of the religious state of Ireland between 1770 and 1850. This book challenges the assumption that religious division in Ireland is inevitable, and suggests that much of the religious intolerance of the last 200 years has been the result of political and religious mistakes made during that earlier period, even though this was an era of reform and reconstruction within all the main religious groupings in Ireland.
The Religious Condition of Ireland 1770-1850
Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at
10:12 am
Product Description
In January 1847, in the worst winter of the Irish famine, Asenath Hatch Nicholson began her one-woman relief operation in Dublin: a soup-kitchen, visits to the homes of the poor and distributing bread in the streets. These efforts marked the start of a campaign, as she travelled the country, aiming to alleviate the starving conditions in Dublin and the West of Ireland and simultaneously “bring the Bible to the Irish poor”. This book is the narrative of an eye-witness who became a part of the lives of those she helped; feeding, clothing and cooking for the most needy. It has observations of individuals and events, but it also examines the circumstances that led to and sustained the famine, condeming those in power who mismanaged resources.
Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at
8:07 am
Product Description
Work from the Irish writer, barrister, economist and moderate Irish nationalist politician.
The Open Secret of Ireland
Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at
6:07 am
Product Description
Originally published in 1890, Turf Fire Stories and Fairy Tales of Ireland is a delightful collection of tales not found anywhere else. Stories include “The Four Leaved Shamrock,” “Blarney Castle,” “Murder Will Out,” “Smuggled Poteen,” “The Irish Whistle,” “The Fairy’s Purse,” “The Magic Clover,” “The Wishing Stone,” and many more. With fifty-six tales in all, there’s something to please every fan of Irish myth and legend. Woodcut illustrations throughout.
Turf Fire Stories and Fairy Tales of Ireland: A Collection of Irish Myth and Legend
Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at
5:13 am
Product Description
This is a study of religion, politics, and society in a period of great significance in modern Irish history. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the consolidation of the power of the Protestant landed class, the enactment of penal laws against Catholics, and constitutional conflicts that forced Irish Protestants to redefine their ideas of national identity. Connolly’s scholarly and wide-ranging study examines these developments and sets them in their historical context. The Ireland that emerges from his lucid and penetrating analysis was essentially a part of ancien regime Europe: a pre-industrial society in which the dominance of a landed elite depended on maintaining the balance between coercion, deference, and an absence of credible pretenders to power; in which the ties of patronage and clientship were often more important than horizontal bonds of shared economic or social position; and in which religion remained a central part of personal and political motivation.
Religion, Law, and Power: The Making of Protestant Ireland 1660-1760
