IT is a notion in today's criticism that no two readings of the same text, not consecutive readings by the same reader, are ever the same. However, unless something traumatic happens overnight, or we bring a rather radical book to bed with us, the concepts and assumptions with which we approach tomorrow's "text" will be very similar to those with which we read today's. Nua Leamha is just such a radical book. The ten essays, or "new readings", in this wide ranging collection will have no small bearing on future approaches to literature in Irish from 1600 to 1900.
Not that all the essays are concerned with literature alone. History is equally prominent. Micheal Mac Craith examines the development of the concepts athartha ("fatherland") and naisiun ("nation"), and discusses the use of the word Eireannach by writers in the 17th century, as well as noting the juxtaposition of the two last (an Naisiun Eireannach) by Tadhg O Cianain in 1609.
The conflict between Irish and English concepts of themselves and "the Other" is at the heart of Declan Kiberd's post colonial assessment not only of Seathrun Ceitinn's monumental Foras Feasa ar Eirinn, but of the works of English writers of the period. "Spencer was in no doubt [I translate] about the English nation; but he had no understanding whatever that the Irish, for their part, had a similar self image." This statement must be seen in the light of Mac Craith's investigations, but, as he does in his recent book, Inventing Ireland, Kiberd makes a strong case for seeing Foras Feasa as a post colonial response to imperialist writing.
These same concepts of "nation" and "Irish" are examined with respect to the Protestant Ascendancy of the 18th century by Thomas Bartlett, who sees the growing self confidence and security of the Protestant colonists bringing them to a position where, by the end of the century, they, too, could make the fatal juxtaposition. After 1798, however, and with nervousness growing due to the pressure from England to make concessions to the Catholics, the concept of "the Irish Nation" was exchanged for that of British Imperialism.
The most startling and, for me, the most challenging reassessment in the book, comes from Grace Neville, who discusses the "hidden currents" of the danta gra, those often facetious and ironical love poems of Classical Irish. The poems betray narcissism and misogyny, according to Neville, and see the woman (and indeed Woman, "the Other" again) as malignant, dangerous, as little more than a body, fragmented and subject to death and decay. The catalogue of the poems' hidden (male, Aristotelian and Christian) assumptions does not make pleasant reading.
Assessments, reassessments, and indeed rebuttals, of Corkery's Hidden Ireland thesis have been going on for decades and in this Louis Cullen and Breandan O Buachalla have been to the fore. The power of Corkery's thesis is so great that we need to keep reminding ourselves that the 18th century poets and their readers came from differing social classes: noblemen, farmers, both strong and small, lesees and labourers, as well as innkeepers, shopkeepers and schoolteachers. This pattern continued well into the 19th century - witness Amhlaoibh O Suileabhain, diarist, copyist, and Kilkenny linen draper.
The ill effects of the Famine were so far reaching with respect to the Irish language and its literature, that it is difficult not to see the history of both, for the previous four centuries, as leading inexorably towards it. Seosamh Mac Grianna was not alone in seeing the "decline" as beginning with the Battle of Kinsale and all literary work from then on a further step downward to the final cataclysm.
Nua Leamha gives ample grounds for rejecting this thesis.
In each generation, writers responded to contemporary events with varying degrees of optimism and confidence. This is borne out by all the essays in this book, including those it has cot been possible to mention: Liam P. O Murchu on Daibhi O Bruadair, Kaarino Hollo on "Eachtra Ridire na Leomhan", and Nollaig O Muraile on An Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhishigh.
Not to be overlooked, however, is the essay by Joep Leerssen, in which the critique of our literary, historical, and critical assumptions - the theme of Nua Leamha - is given its most ample expression. For example: much of Irish literature is outside the European romantic tradition of the main imperial languages in which the author "ruled OK". This gives present day critics a remarkable privilege, an almost prelapsarian grace, with which to use feminist, Barthian or other poststructuralist theories to examine Irish texts. This may mean no less than the re assessment of the whole canon of Irish literature. Such is the extent of "new reading" - once you start there is no knowing where you will come to.