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For more information on cookies see our Cookie Policy. (BUTTON) X The Cold of May Day Monday: An Approach to Irish Literary History Robert Welch assembles the past in braided threads of thematic association to create a tapestry that is bright, surprising,and engagingly idiosyncratic The Dead by James Joyce, in John Huston's film adaptation. The Dead by James Joyce, in John Huston's film adaptation. (BUTTON) Previous Image (BUTTON) Next Image Nicholas Allen Sat, Jan 10, 2015, 06:00 First published: Sat, Jan 10, 2015, 06:00 * * * * [] Book Title: The Cold of May Day Monday: An Approach to Irish Literary History ISBN-13: 978-0199686841 Author: Robert Anthony Welch Publisher: Oxford University Press Guideline Price: £20.0 The late Robert Welch’s final book is a literary history of Ireland from the earliest recorded times to the near present. Welch assembles the past in braided threads of thematic association to create a tapestry that is bright and engagingly idiosyncratic. Welch was born in Cork but spent a large part of his life in Northern Ireland. On this island a few hundred kilometres can be considered an exile, and there is no doubt that a distance from his place of origin sharpened Welch’s understanding of those writers who crossed borders with troublesome frequency. This applies to his reading of the lordless poets cast on to the roads in the wake of the disaster at Kinsale, as it does to his response to the colonists like Swift, who began to wonder at the justice of their possessions. Swift’s polemic on Ireland’s administration by the English is well known in the vicious satire of A Modest Proposal, which suggested the slaughter of Ireland’s children as a remedy for famine. Hunger and want are never far from Welch’s story, confirmation in itself of the deeper miseries that provoked centuries of rebellion before British power buckled in the first World War. Welch is brilliant on Thomas Moore’s Lallah Rookh as a “poem that proclaims its freedom even as it rehearses the wrongs that rivet chains into the mind”. Moore’s was a rebellion of taste, as was that of Wilde and of Joyce later on, and it is tempting to think of the great dinner scene in The Dead when Welch quotes from Moore’s sequence that describes a Feast of the Roses in Kashmir. Plantains, the golden and the green, Malaya’s nectar’d mangusteen; Prunes of Bokhara, and sweet nuts From the far groves of Samarkand . . . This is a map of the world drawn from the senses. The British Empire grew to a mastery of global trade as the 19th century progressed, and Moore’s import of the fruits of commerce to poetry veiled the idea of Ireland in the scents of the east, a trick that Joyce reversed in Dubliners when he drew Araby as an empty bazaar. Food, or the lack of it, was a powerful political symbol in post-Famine Ireland, and The Dead is rationed with ingredients from elsewhere, the American apples and Smyrna figs symbols of the island’s inability to sustain itself under colonialism. Welch is very good on Oscar Wilde’s extravagantly gifted family. One of the little treasures of The Cold of May Day Monday is a pamphlet by Lady Jane Wilde (the “Speranza” of the Nation), called the American Irish. In it she advocated the unlikely, but entertaining, return of the diaspora to annex Ireland for the United States. Lady Wilde lamented the waste of national energy on a centuries-old struggle with England. In so doing she provided a formula for Irish rebellion: “Disaffection,” she wrote, “is not an evil where wrongs exist, it is the lever of progress.” Here, as occasionally elsewhere in the book, is a glimpse of how the Ireland of the past was more daring than its counterpart in the present. The subtle achievement of The Cold of May Day Monday is the weave of history and culture into a patchwork of such bright and unpredictable colour that it is hard to credit it to so small a place, so intensely felt. Welch draws vivid lines between art, language and the individual’s understanding of their time. If there is one unshifting co-ordinate through the book it is the idea of place, which Welch returns to over and again as a central trope of all Irish writing. Throughout, Welch is a careful reader of poetry, and his recovery of Austin Clarke’s The Lost Heifer from The Cattledrive of Connaught is proof of his close attention to his subject. Welch reads the poem minutely, touching the core of its sensibility, which is a 20th-century elegy for a nation in the early days of its statehood: When the black herds of the rain were grazing In the gap of the cold pure wind And the watery hazes of the hazel Brought her into my mind, I thought of the last honey by the water That no hive can find. The Cold of May Day Monday flows boldly through the troubled stream of Irish literature. A major achievement of scholarship and narrative, it is that rare book that hears wild laughter in the archives of a troubled island. Nicholas Allen is director of the Wilson Center and Franklin professor of English at the University of Georgia. He is writing a cultural history of 1916 and its impact on modernism Sat, Jan 10, 2015, 06:00 First published: Sat, Jan 10, 2015, 06:00 * * * * Subscribe. [image.jpg] Click here to sign up to the Irish Times Book Club More from The Irish Times * Books Lebanon * Music Pop Corner: Selena marks her ex’s spot; Zayn chaffed at control * People Impossibly photogenic: the Tiger’s Nest, or Taktsang Palphug, monastery, Bhutan’s most sacred site. Photograph: EyesWideOpen/Getty Bhutan: the price of paradise * Opinion “The Red Hand, that ubiquitous symbol of Ulster, straddles the political and sectarian divide.” Right hand, wrong foot – An Irishman’s Diary about political and religious symbolism ADVERTISEMENT [adserv|3.0|826.1|4268859|0|170|ADTECH;loc=300;target=_blank;kvtopic=Bo oks;cookie=info;] ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT [adserv|3.0|826.1|4268858|0|170|ADTECH;loc=300;target=_blank;kvtopic=Bo oks;cookie=info;] [image.jpg] IFRAME: https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/playl ists/72151780&color=b74f7d&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comm ents=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false Subscribe on iTunes Follow on Soundcloud Listen on Stitcher Thomas Morris: the stories may not range very far geographically, but Morris manages to display remarkable range for a young man in his cast of characters, proving himself equally at home in a middle-aged woman’s heels or an old man’s slippers. The Book Club Click to join in the discussion about this month's book: We Don't Know What We're Doing by Thomas Morris Hennessy short story of the month How to Float by Niamh Donnelly: Two girls drift through a polluted paradise in this month’s winning Hennessy New Irish Writing short story Most Read in Culture 1 Family sugar audit: Eva Orsmond with Louise and Ollie Ryan Television: A sugar-crash course in how we are poisoning ourselves 2 Michael B Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in Creed ‘Apollo Creed meant everything to African-Americans’ 3 Did Philip K Dick dream of electric sheep? Much worse 4 Final bow: Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc at the end of the final Friends, in 2004 Friends: they lived perfect lives in a time of plenty. Of course we want them back 5 ‘I think cognitive enhancers should be allowed for academics’ Unthinkable: Is it unethical to take brain stimulants? Never miss a story. SUBSCRIBE IFRAME: //www.facebook.com/plugins/likebox.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook. com%2FIrishTimesBooks&width=292&height=258&colorscheme=light&show_faces =true&header=false&stream=false&show_border=true Short stories All the Boys, a short story by Thomas Morris Eilís Ni Dhúibhne New Zealand Flax, a short story by Eílís Ní Dhuibhne Alan McMonagle: has written two collections of short stories, Liar Liar (Wordsonthestreet, 2008) and Psychotic Episodes (Arlen House, 2013) and has just signed two-book deal with Picador Bleeding Boy, a short story by Alan McMonagle Book reviews At Home in the Revolution review: the Rising’s clan na gals Review: Perspectives for a pathbreaker 1916: A Global History review: midpoint for a world engulfed in war High Treason: The Appeal of Roger Casement. By courtesy of Rosensteil’s on behalf of the Estate of Sir John Lavery UK Government Art Collection Making 1916: The stuff of history John De Lorean: a high-octane outline, a glittering absence, always on the move. It’s tempting to see him simply as a gambler where the game always means more than the outcome. But he was also a talented engineer and an innovator, responsible for that classic muscle car the Pontiac Firebird. Photograph: PA Gull by Glenn Patterson: John DeLorean, taking us all for one hell of a ride Sign up to the weekly Irish Times books newsletter for features, podcasts and more Google ID ____________________ Name ____________________ Surname ____________________ Email ____________________ (BUTTON) Sign Up [X] I would also like to receive occasional update emails from The Irish Times New poetry Lebanon Liz Quirke Poems: Nurture and Juno Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz: inspiration for WB Yeats, Kevin McAleer, Fintan O’Toole ... and you? Photograph: Sligo County Library Improve on Kevin McAleer’s WB Yeats meme: win two silk kimonos and gazelle* Great reads From crosswords to great wines and the best bits from The Irish Times - Buy an Irish Times Book today Brought to Book What lessons has Danielle McLaughlin learned about life from reading? “To question. To see things from different viewpoints. That there are as many versions of a particular story as there are people involved. That some stories don’t get told at all” Danielle McLaughlin: ‘I think we need different books at different times’ Frankie Gaffney: I did fill an artist’s notebook with anecdotes and phrases once I’d decided to write a book. I’d recommend this to anyone; daily life is instantly transformed into research, and life itself becomes more rewarding when you start finding and recording value in the mundane Frankie Gaffney’s advice to writers: ‘give up the booze and break some rules’ Shelved: a selection of books by Irish women writers. 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