The Irish Story
Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland
Published on 5. September 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-0-14-029685-3 (ISBN)
Description
R.F. Foster's The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland examines how key events in Irish history have been recast and retold to serve a multiplicity of purposes.
In this provocative and extremely funny book Roy Foster demolishes the cliches that surround Ireland's past, examining how key moments have been turned into myths - and, more recently, airbrushed and repackaged for Hollywood and popular culture.
Whether discussing the 'misery tourism' of Famine theme parks, ideas of mystical Celticism, the contested 'Irishness' of Yeats or the sentimentalized childhoods of Angela's Ashes and Gerry Adams's memoir, The Irish Story brilliantly separates the tall tales from the truth.
'Brilliantly scathing ... combative, incisive and immensely enjoyable'
Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times
'Inspirational ... challenging, illuminating and witty'
Antonia Fraser, Irish Times Books of the Year
'Very funny ... the Irish story has rarely received so lively and unbiased an unfolding'
Patricia Craig, Independent
'A complex and supremely intelligent revision of Irish identity'
Colm Toibin, Independent Books of the Year
'Blazingly good ... lucid and elegant'
John Lloyd, Financial Times
R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include Modern Ireland: 1600-1972, Luck and the Irish and W. B. Yeats: A Life.
In this provocative and extremely funny book Roy Foster demolishes the cliches that surround Ireland's past, examining how key moments have been turned into myths - and, more recently, airbrushed and repackaged for Hollywood and popular culture.
Whether discussing the 'misery tourism' of Famine theme parks, ideas of mystical Celticism, the contested 'Irishness' of Yeats or the sentimentalized childhoods of Angela's Ashes and Gerry Adams's memoir, The Irish Story brilliantly separates the tall tales from the truth.
'Brilliantly scathing ... combative, incisive and immensely enjoyable'
Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times
'Inspirational ... challenging, illuminating and witty'
Antonia Fraser, Irish Times Books of the Year
'Very funny ... the Irish story has rarely received so lively and unbiased an unfolding'
Patricia Craig, Independent
'A complex and supremely intelligent revision of Irish identity'
Colm Toibin, Independent Books of the Year
'Blazingly good ... lucid and elegant'
John Lloyd, Financial Times
R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include Modern Ireland: 1600-1972, Luck and the Irish and W. B. Yeats: A Life.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
364 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-14-029685-3 (9780140296853)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2002
1st Edition
Penguin Books Ltd
€10.99
Available for download
Person
R.F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University. His books include MODERN IRELAND 1600-1972 and the first volume of W.B. YEATS: A LIFE. In 2000 he was a Booker Prize judge. THE IRISH STORY was shortlisted for the 2001 Orwell Prize.
Content
The story of Ireland; theme-parks and histories; "colliding cultures" - Leland Lyons and the reinterpretation of Irish history; years at war - poetic strategies and political reconstruction; "when the newspapers have forgotten me" - Yeats, obituarists and Irishness; the normal and the national - Yeats and the boundaries of Irish writing; square-built power and fiery shorthand - Yeats, Carleton and the Irish nineteenth century; stopping the hunt - Trollope and the memory of Ireland; prints on the scene - Elizabeth Bowen and the landscape of childhood; selling Irish childhoods - Frank McCourt and Gerry Adams; the salamander and the slap - Hubert Butler and his century; remembering 1798.