Fumbling in the Greasy Till: Economic Rhetoric and Contemporary Irish Poetry, 2006-2012

• Main Author: Sperry, Amanda
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University 2015
• Subjects: Irish poetry; Economic rhetoric; Metaphor; Metonymy; Celtic Tiger; Financial Crisis
• Online Access: http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/157; http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1169&context=english_diss

The anxiety produced by the Celtic Tiger collapse created a cultural demand for cognitive frames that made the dramatically altered social circumstances and processes leading to the new economic conditions relatable. To understand the 2008 financial collapse's impact on Ireland, the nation's leading newspaper, the Irish Times, predictably employed tropes in service since the Great Depression, including human body and geological metaphors for the economic system, while rarely using metaphors such as the casino economy or the networked economy that more aptly described the level of speculation in an economic system structured by the realities of the information age. Ireland’s post-Celtic Tiger poets exemplify the reciprocity between journalistic discourse incorporating economic tropes and Irish and Northern Irish poets’ use of this discourse as a method of social critique invested in the political policy direction of their nation. Irish poetry, absorbed in a more intensive version of linguistic expression and experimentation than journalistic discourse and economic rhetoric, provides insight into the effect of economic metaphors on the socio-cultural circumstances of the nation.