Irish Interior: Keeping Faith with the Past in Gaelic Prose, 1940-1951

This is the first volume of a two-part collection following on from O'Leary's "Gaelic Prose in the Irish Free State 1922-1939". Although the 1940s are often seen as a period of lowered post-Renaissance expectations for Irish writers of English, they were years of considerable creative ferment for writers of Irish. Virtually nothing has been written about writing in Irish during and just after the Second World War. "Irish Interior" explores the issues within, but not strictly confined to the cultural nationalism of the language movement. O'Leary draws on a wide range work, exploring writers including Seamus O Grianna, Sean Mac Maolain and Padraig O Siochfradha. The study concludes with a discussion of Mairtin O Cadhain and Brian O Nuallain, who consciously subverted the dominant elegiac or idealising paradigms in their treatment of the Gaeltacht.