‘Green World’: The Mock-Pastoral of The Irish R.M.
As the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy’s hold on the land of Ireland was being loosened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Somerville and Ross turned to the mode of comic pastoral. William Empson defines the literary mode of pastoral as writing ‘about’ the common people, but not ‘by’ or ‘f...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Asociación Española de Estudios Irlandeses
2008-03-01
|
| Series: | Estudios Irlandeses |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/pdfAndrewJGaravel.pdf |
| Summary: | As the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy’s hold on the land of Ireland was being loosened in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Somerville and Ross turned to the mode of comic pastoral. William Empson defines the literary mode of pastoral as writing ‘about’ the common people, but not ‘by’ or ‘for’ them. The popular short stories about the experiences of Major Sinclair Yeates, ‘the Irish R.M.’, depict for a modern readership his encounter with a pre-modern society in rural Ireland which is wild and uncouth compared to the metropolitan world, but at the same time more open, generous, and free from moral strictures. The stories conform to a number of pastoral conventions, including nostalgia for a rural ‘golden age’ in the recent past, and a thorough-going mixture of high and low elements (e.g., nobility and crudity, kindliness and knavery, etc.) |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1699-311X 1699-311X |