ENG/POLS 282: Irish Literature and Politics

Welcome to our course site for ENG/POLS 282: Irish Literature and Politics. This study abroad course examines Irish political conflicts during the 20th century through literature, in the year that the Irish celebrate the centennial of the Easter Rising. This site contains blogs and pictures about our experiences with the texts and Ireland. Please feel free to comment on the blogs, follow our calendar of upcoming events, or take a look at the pictures we share of Dublin, Galway, and Belfast.

An excerpt from today’s featured post by Amanda Estep:

The Abbey Theater was fun and it was a little sad to see it was a lot like many other theaters doing all they can with limited budgets. I would love to see what they could pull off with less restrictions put on them. Probably the most fun I had on the tour was the story that the Ghost of Lady Gregory hangs around the theater. It was fun because if anyone would stay around to make sure what they created stayed alive even after they were long dead, it would be someone like Lady Gregory. Hauntings are things that may not be physically real, but they can be something that stays in order to remind people that they once existed. In Bernard Maclaverty’s book Cal, Cal is haunted for a similar reason. The only difference is the memory of Lady Gregory promotes progress, while Cal’s guilt holds him back.

Lady Gregory, Yeats, the Fay brothers, Annie Horniman and others involved in the creation of the Abbey Theater all wanted to bring culture to Dublin. Lady Gregory even had the seal of the theater commission with Queen Maeve to show strength and progress while still calling back to Ireland’s history. For people to believe that she haunts the theater, it creates its own connection to history as well. The story acts as a small reminder to progress while not forgetting the past. This is a good thing, as long as she does not go the way of The Phantom.

Cal is not so lucky. The memory that he helped to kill Mr. Morton prevents him from thinking about the future. Mr. Morton’s widow, Marcella talks about how she feels sad that Ireland is so focused on the past and present that it cannot think of a future. Cal is exactly the same. Mr. Morton’s “ghost” haunts Cal to the point where Cal can only think on his guilt.