A short history of Irish literature Book

Kenner was a professor of literature who did not write like a professor. He was enthralled by modernist writing. He wrote big books on Ezra Pound, Joyce, Beckett, and T. S. Eliot.

This is a study of 20th century modernism in Ireland. He wrote similar books about England and America. All three of the books served as my introduction to that world when I was in my 20s. It seemed time to reread them.

Kenner is an enthusiast who likes to show you the interesting things he has found. Yeats and Joyce at the middle of the story. The other major writers he discusses, including Beckett, Flann O'Brien, Sean O'Casey and Lady Gregory react off of them.

Some pieces I enjoyed;

He makes the case that Ulysses' Bloom is a tall man. He admits that most readers think of him as short but he claims he was 5'9", which was relatively tall in Dublin of 1904.

"English, to be written well, T. S. Eliot tells us, needs writing with a certain animosity: a withholding of assent from all the things its words want to say unbidden." ( Which is a good explanation for the good and bad in modernist literature.)

He says that the peculiar and memorable dialog of John Synge is because, "Unlike most of the Abbey playwrights, he was a writer at heart, not a talker."

When Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" opened at the Abbey in 1907, it was met by riots. The Nationalist and conservatives agreed that it was an insult to the noble Irish common man and a libel of the virtuous poor Irish woman. Kenner quotes a newspaper rant against the play in the "Freeman's Journal", which he mentions is "a paper now remembered for an advertisement canvasser it employed in 1904."


Kenner has thought long and hard about Irish modernism. This is not an easy read. It is a good read because the complexity is not from jargon or messy thinking. It is the complexity of a knowledgeable and enthusiastic writer making intricate points. I did have some pages, particularly discussions of books I had not read, that I simply skimmed and moved on. I usually found something good on the next page.