Day: February 17, 2015

Type: Notes

White, Harry. ‘Handel in Dublin: A Note.’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 182-186.

This essay discusses the differences in ideological climate and conditions of musical performances in Dublin and London in the 1740s and so accounts for the success of Handel’s The Messiah in Dublin and its Continue reading Vol. 2: White, Harry.

Type: Notes

Raynor, David R. ‘Hutcheson’s Defence against the Charge of Plagiarism’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 177-181.

After the publishing of An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in 1725, author Francis Hutcheson was accused of plagiarizing the work from Jean-Pierre de Crousaz’s Continue reading Vol. 2: Raynor, David R.

Type: Notes

Passman, Dirk F. ‘‘Many Diverting Books of History and Travels’ and A Modest Proposal.’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 167-176.

Considers eighteenth-century travel and historical literature containing reports of infanticide and cannibalism as possible sources for Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Discusses those works either read by or Continue reading Vol. 2: Passman, Dirk F.

Type: Article

Mahony, Robert. ‘The Pamphlet Campaign against Henry Grattan in 1797-99’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 149-166.

This article discusses the anti-Grattan pamphlet campaign following Grattan’s withdrawal from the Irish House of Commons in May 1797, and his subsequent Address to the Citizens of Dublin. Grattan’s apparent ‘desertion’ Continue reading Vol. 2: Mahony, Robert.

Type: Article

Greene, John. ‘The Repertory of The Dublin Theatres, 1720-1745’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 133-148.

In 1938, theatre historian La Tourette Stockwell wrote of eighteenth-century Dublin that the policy of Dublin theatre managers was to ‘copy’ London stage productions and that the taste of Dublin audiences was Continue reading Vol. 2: Greene, John.

Type: Article

Fitzgerald, Desmond. ‘Early Irish Trade-Cards and Other Eighteenth-Century Ephemera’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 115-132.

This essay by Desmond Fitzgerald, Knight of Glin, explores the importance of Irish trade-cards, labels, bill-heads and other trade ephemera and shows their ability to “evoke vividly the daily lives of the Continue reading Vol. 2: Fitzgerald, Desmond.

Type: Article

McMinn, Joseph. ‘A Weary Patriot: Swift and the Formation of an Anglo-Irish Identity’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 103-113.

This article discusses the literary career of Jonathan Swift from 1720-1730 and his role as an Irish pamphleteer, which would “define and dramatize the constitutional identity of ‘the Continue reading Vol. 2: McMinn, Joseph.

Type: Article

Stewart, M.A. ‘John Smith and the Molesworth Circle’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 89-102.

This article explores the 1722 controversy surrounding the Dublin printing of A Short Account of the Late Treatment of the Students of the University of G—w, which described a confrontation between rebel students Continue reading Vol. 2: Stewart, M.A.

Type: Article

Ó Catháin, Diarmaid. ‘Dermot O’Connor, Translator of Keating’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 67-87.

Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa Ar Éirinn (1633), a compilation of Irish seanchas (lore) and Gaelic history, was, until the twentieth-century, a literary model and ‘virtual bible of the Irish tradition’. This article examines the life and career of Dermot O’Connor whose 1723 English translation of Foras Feasa was the first version of the text available to English speakers and had a ‘profound effect on the Anglo-Irish tradition’. O’Connor’s bilingualism allowed him to move freely between Dublin and London circles, where sufficient interest in the Gaelic language and tradition earned him a successful living as a Gaelic scribe. The article traces his movements in London and Dublin, and the controversies surrounding his work and reputation. Ó Catháin concludes that ‘it is obvious from Dermot O’Connor’s life alone that there was much more interaction between Irish-language and English-language cultures and between catholics and protestants in Ireland than has been widely assumed’. Included is a sample of a plate of bilingual pedigrees from the London edition of O’Connor’s translation of Foras Feasa.

Type: Article

Breatnach, Pádraig A. ‘Oral and Written Transmission of Poetry in the Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 57-65.

This article discusses Seanachas Phádraig Í Chrualaoi (1982), a collection of oral and written poetry in Irish tradition dating back to the close of the seventeenth century. Continue reading Vol. 2: Breatnach, Pádraig A.

Type: Article

McLoughlin, T.O. ‘The Context of Edmund Burke’s The Reformer’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987), pp 37-55.

This essay deals with the successes and failures of one of Edmund Burke’s earliest publications, The Reformer, a weekly paper edited and for the most part written by Burke when he was Continue reading Vol. 2: McLoughlin, T.O.

Type: Article

McCormack, W. J. ‘Vision and Revision in the Study of Eighteenth-Century Irish Parliamentary Rhetoric’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 2 (1987) .

This essay is a critical assessment of two articles published in volume one of Eighteenth-Century Ireland: ‘Swift and the Anglo-Irish Intellect’ (pp. 9-22) by Seamus Deane and ‘The Grattan Mystique’ (pp. 177-194) by Gerard O’Brien. Both authors have ‘an insufficiently critical approach to the mechanisms of eighteenth-century parliamentary rhetoric and its production in print.’ McCormack indicts O’Brien for failing to recognize that newspaper parliamentary reporting in eighteenth-century Ireland often went beyond informing its readers and was designed to propound ‘a particular ideological view of parliamentary function’; thus parliamentary reports ‘constituted a species of fiction’ and historians should not accept them uncritically or underestimate the value of other sources. Deane is criticised for ‘too generously dispersing across the whole eighteenth century a coinage – ‘protestant ascendancy’ – which can be observed in the process of its first minting many years after Swift’s death’. McCormack hopes his article will begin the systematic reappraisal of Irish cultural historiography which he believes is needed.

Type: Article

Real, Herman J. and Heinz J. Vienken ‘Psychoanalytic Criticism and Swift: the History of a Failure’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 127-141.

Real and Vienken assess the contributions made to Swift scholarship by psychoanalytical critics of the twentieth-century. Psychoanalytic interpretations of Swift’s so called ‘scatological’ poems and of Gulliver’s Travels are challenged. The authors question the validity of the evidence used by psychoanalytical criticism to condemn Swift as having an obsession with ‘filth’, ‘anality’, and ‘sado-cannibalistic fantasies’. They also challenge popular myths concerning Swift’s marital status, his mental state, and his alleged predilection for scatology. The use of Freud’s ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ as a model for the psychoanalytical study of Swift, and the more recent controversy concerning the compatibility of applying psychoanalysis to literature are both considered. The article accepts the view of Norman O’Brown that scatology need not be the perverse product of a diseased mind but can legitimately function as a means of satirical shock therapy, but categorises the twentieth-century psychoanalytical study of Swift, in general, as a miserable failure.

Type: Article

Craven, Kenneth. ‘A Tale of a Tub and the 1697 Dublin Controversy’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 97-110.

This article considers the intellectual atmosphere of late seventeenth-century Ireland as ‘Modern’ methodologies of philosophy swept over Europe. The lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695 had allowed the publication of John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious (London 1696) which was followed, in Dublin in 1697, by Peter Browne’s response, A Letter in Answer to a Book Entitled Christianity Not Mysterious, and what Craven labels ‘the 1697 Dublin Controversy’. The article discusses the public confrontation between Toland and Browne over Christianity and reason. These ‘unquiet spirits’ or ‘modern madmen’, as Jonathan Swift regarded his contemporary adversaries, fuelled Swift with satirical inspiration to become the focus of his attack in A Tale of a Tub. Swift had personal involvement with Toland and Browne, as well as with a third antagonist in the Dublin Controversy, Archbishop Marsh of Dublin. According to Craven, Swift had reasons to mock all three, for they ‘symbolized the modern invasion of Ireland’. The article shows how the Dublin Controversy enabled Swift to satirize epistemological issues of reason and mysticism simultaneously, finding in Browne and Marsh examples of those guilty of priestcraft and modernism.

Type: Notes

Woods, C.J. ‘The authorship of a letter received by Tone in America in 1795’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 5 (1990), pp 192-194.

In 1795 during his exile in America, Wolfe Tone received a series of letters from Ireland that persuaded him to go to France to represent the United Continue reading Vol. 5: Woods, C.J.

Type: Article

Deane, Seamus. ‘Swift and the Anglo-Irish Intellect’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 9-22.

The purpose of this essay is to provide a context for some of Swift’s writings and to ‘demonstrate the advantages to be gained from seeing him as a member of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy of the eighteenth century’. Moral philosophies and contemporary attitudes towards travel literature, as well as economic theories, consumption of popular fashion, Epicureanism, libertinism, benevolence, atheism, despotic power, and ‘national love’ are discussed in relation to Gulliver’s Travels and A Modest Proposal. These themes and their relation to Swift’s writings are further analysed within the context of the writings of Francis Hutcheson, Edmund Burke, the earl of Shaftesbury and John Mandeville. Also discussed are Swift’s A Tale of a Tub and John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious. Deane’s wide-ranging essay indicates, in outline, the complexity and importance of the Irish intellectual tradition in the eighteenth century.

Type: Article

Williams, N. J. A. ‘Dermot O’Connor’s Blazons and Irish Heraldic Terminology’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 5 (1990), pp 61-88.

This essay considers one side of the career of Dermot O’Connor, the eighteenth-century translator of Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa Ar Éirinn, and an accomplished heraldic artist in Dublin and London. Continue reading Vol. 5: Williams, N. J. A.

Type: Notes

Benson, C.J. ‘Anatomizing early printed books in Trinity College, Dublin’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 195-198.

Discusses the library’s method of cataloguing texts printed before 1900, and ways of accessing and using the information contained in the catalogues. Also provides a short history of the library’s early printed books cataloguing system.

Type: Article

Watson, Seosamh. ‘Laoi Chab an Dosáin: Background to a late Ossianic Ballad’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 5 (1990), pp 37-44.

This article discusses fourteen manuscript versions of Laoi Chab an Dosáin, “perhaps the most obscene literary piece in pre-modern Irish literature”. Included is a summary of the plot Continue reading Vol. 5: Watson, Seosamh.

Type: Article

Robinson, Nicholas. ‘Caricature and the Regency Crisis: an Irish perspective’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 157-176.

This article discusses how caricaturists portrayed the two most important Irishmen in the Westminster parliament, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Edmund Burke, during the Regency Crisis of 1788-89. Robinson gives evidence of the immense popularity of caricatures in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Ireland and England, and suggests that caricatures are an important source of information for Irish history that are often neglected and overlooked by historians. He details the mental illness of King George III, the events that led up to the Regency Crisis of 1788, the ‘propaganda battle’ which ensued between the Tories and Whigs, and the ‘swift and scurrilous’ reaction of the caricaturists, particularly in their portrayal of the battle between Sheridan and Burke. Included are eight plates of caricatures of the Regency Crisis; Robinson summarizes and analyses each, noting the prejudice in the caricaturists’ depiction of ‘Irishness’. Also included are two appendices: A note on the Dublin print trade, and The caricaturists, containing biographical information on the artists noted in the text.

Type: Notes

Woods, C. J. ‘An unnoticed pamphlet by Charles O’Conor at Belanagare: A vindication of the political principles of Roman Catholics (1761).’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 7 (1992), pp147-148..

This is a corrected version of the note published, inadvertently, in an uncorrected form in Eighteenth Century Ireland volume 6 (1991), Continue reading Vol. 7: Woods, C. J.

Type: Article

Turpin, John. ‘French Influence on Eighteenth-Century Art Education in Dublin’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 5 (1990), pp 105-116.

This article discusses drawing schools in Ireland and their development as a direct result of “the political, social and economic circumstances of Georgian Ireland, together with the influence of the French Continue reading Vol. 5: Turpin, John.

Type: Article

O’Brien, Gerard. ‘The Grattan Mystique’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 177-194.

This article investigates the longstanding mystique surrounding the ‘patriot tradition’ of Henry Grattan. O’Brien challenges the view that ‘Grattan almost single-handedly won the free trade dispute and secured the leadership of the patriots’. O’Brien discusses the ‘hagiographical’ five-volume Memoirs of the Life and Times of Henry Grattan (1839-43) written by Henry Grattan Jr. which, due to the destruction of the personal papers of those Grattan corresponded with, became the chief source for biographers. O’Brien suggests that all Grattan’s subsequent biographers have contributed to the maintenance of the mystique with their ‘unimaginative and uncritical’ treatment of the politician. He questions the authenticity of Grattan’s 16 April 1782 speech, later published by Grattan Jr. in 1822, in which Grattan is said to have made the famous pronouncement: ‘Spirit of Swift, spirit of Molyneux, your genius has prevailed; Ireland is now a nation’. O’Brien provides evidence to suggest that Grattan rewrote the famous speech which for all historians has been the touchstone of ‘patriot tradition’ and which, as printed, ‘contained phrases which were never uttered by him and forwarded ideas and sentiments which he did not, at the crucial period, entertain’.

Type: Notes

Woods, C.J. ‘An unnoticed pamphlet by Charles O’Conor at Belanagare: A vindication of the political principles of Roman Catholics (1761)’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 6 (1991), pp 161.

Please see Eighteenth-Century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr 7 (1992) for the corrected text of this note which discusses the Continue reading Vol. 6: Woods, C.J.

Type: Article

Severens, Kenneth ‘Emigration and Provincialism: Samuel Cardy’s Architectual Career in the Atlantic World’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 5 (1990), pp 21-36.

In 1752, Dublin master builder and carpenter Samuel Cardy emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina. Though involved in some successful buildings in Dublin, Cardy’s departure for America was Continue reading Vol. 5: Severens, Kenneth

Type: Notes

Berman, David. ‘Berkeley’s Siris and the ‘Whiskey Patriots”, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 1 (1986), pp 200-203.

In Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reflexions Concerning Tar-water (1744), George Berkeley recommends tar-water as a universal panacea; but the work is also part of the author’s campaign against ‘pernicious’ spirits and ‘Whiskey patriots’. Berman discusses Berkeley’s curious belief in tar-water as a universal medicine and ‘healthy alternative to spirits’.

Type: Article

Reece, Bob. ‘Irish Anticipations of Botany Bay’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 12 (1997), pp 116-136..

In 1786, with the need for an alternative to trans-Atlantic transport of convicts from Britain to America, the British government announced plans for the establishment of a convict settlement in Botany Bay, New South Continue reading Vol. 12: Reece, Bob.

Type: Article

Wheatley, Christopher J. ‘Heroic Palimpsest: Robert Ashton’s The Battle of Aughrim’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 11 (1996), pp 53-73..

This article gives an account of Robert Ashton’s play The Battle of Aughrim (1728), and its enduring appeal over a century and a half to both protestants and catholics. Based Continue reading Vol. 11: Wheatley, Christopher J.

Type: Article

O’Brien, Gerard. ‘The Unimportance of Public Opinion in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland.’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 8 (1993), Pp 115-127..

This article assesses the extent to which the ‘insiders’ (i.e., political decision-makers) in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland, were not listening to the ‘outsiders’ (i.e., the general public), and why. Continue reading Vol. 8: O’Brien, Gerard.

Type: Notes

Trainor, Charles. ‘Henry Fielding and Ireland’, Eighteenth-century Ireland/Iris an dá chultúr, Vol. 7 (1992), Pp 136-140..

This note discusses Fielding’s contempt for foreigners and draws attention to the negative Irish stereotypes in works such as Tom Jones. However, as a magistrate, Fielding showed sympathy for and fair treatment to Continue reading Vol. 7: Trainor, Charles.