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THOMAS KINSELLA AND THE MATTER OF IRELAND: FROM FAIRYBOG TO FINISTERE (POETRY, COLONIALISM, TRANSLATION)
Abstract
From his first translation of Longes Mac nUislenn through The Tain to An Duanaire, changes in Thomas Kinsella's concerns as a translator reveal his increasing respect for the original Irish text. Kinsella's attitude toward the work of translation itself changes from making an "offering to the past" to repossessing a heritage. The change in his concerns as a translator corresponds to changes in Kinsella's poetic use of his cultural and personal past, and these changes in his poetry in turn correspond to his embracing the matter of Ireland. One of the most important changes in Kinsella's poetry is in his understanding of audience. In the early poetry his sense of audience disallows his using the matter of Ireland, but in the later poetry his understanding of audience allows incorporation of Irish material. Before returning to the matter of Ireland, however, Kinsella had to turn away, and his early poetry expresses that eschewal. Not only does Kinsella change audience in his later work, but he also changes poetic stance and his understanding of the function of poetry. A paradigm for the change that takes place in Kinsella's poetry might be his own description of the poles of modern Irish literature, Joyce and Yeats. Like Yeats, Kinsella's early poetry stands above the filthy modern tide, in a romantic isolation epitomized by "Baggot Street Deserta." A pivotal work in Kinsella's movement out of the tower and into the street is "Nightwalker," where the poet immerses himself, like Joyce, in the filthy tide of Irish life. In the new poetry, the past orders the present. Kinsella begins to use Irish myth in a way that it has never been used in Irish poetry in English, as psychic myth. Under the influence of his increased respect for Irish literature, Kinsella's poetry takes on a vatic function and a socially useful function of healing.
Subject Area
Modern literature
Recommended Citation
DUNN, JAMES HENRY, "THOMAS KINSELLA AND THE MATTER OF IRELAND: FROM FAIRYBOG TO FINISTERE (POETRY, COLONIALISM, TRANSLATION)" (1984). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI8410279.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI8410279