Papers by Niall O Ciosain
Revue LISA / LISA e-journal, 2005
... type of material in contributions by readers, but my research on French material has been ...... more ... type of material in contributions by readers, but my research on French material has been ... is simply one aspect of the more general weakness of Irish-language print culture compared to ... Judging from those I have seen, visual illustrations were very common in nineteenth-century ...
Irish Economic and Social History, 2013
Cultural and Social History, 2013
While the cultural trajectories of the Celtic language communities have some broad similarities i... more While the cultural trajectories of the Celtic language communities have some broad similarities in the long term, their histories in the medium term were quite different. This article approaches this issue through a comparative analysis of the print cultures of Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Breton and Irish in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The approach is both quantitative and qualitative, surveying total production in the four languages as well as looking at the presence and absence of different genres in the different languages. It also examines diaspora publishing in America and Australia. The different patterns are explained primarily in terms of the nature and extent of institutional church support for publishing in those languages.
The history of the Irish language in nineteenth-century Australia, and of its use among Irish imm... more The history of the Irish language in nineteenth-century Australia, and of its use among Irish immigrants, is not very clear. On the one hand, Patrick O'Farrell has maintained that the Irish were overwhelmingly anglophone on arrival or else assimilated linguistically with great rapidity; on the other hand, Dymphna Lonergan has argued that Irish did survive as a spoken language for some time. It is difficult to decide between these two positions. Historians rely principally on written documentation for evidence of past behaviour, but it is not necessarily a reliable guide to spoken language.
Folk Life: a Journal of Ethnological Studies Vol.59, 2021
Among the principal Celtic languages, Irish is conspicuous for the paucity of printed production ... more Among the principal Celtic languages, Irish is conspicuous for the paucity of printed production between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. Various explanations have been advanced for this by Irish scholars and historians. Among them number suggestions that, since printing was an urban phenomenon, and since towns in Ireland were largely English-speaking, printers therefore lacked the necessary language skills. This paper evaluates such explanations through an exploration of printing in Ireland of texts in Celtic languages other than Irish. More was printed in Welsh than in Irish in Dublin in the 1740s and 1760s, while two substantial collections of poetry in Scottish Gaelic were printed in Cork and Galway around 1800. The paper concludes that Irish printers could work in different languages, and their supposed lack of linguistic skills was not therefore a major factor in preventing the production of printed Irish.
Open Access at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/04308778.2021.1896178
This paper uses the extraordinarily rich data on literacy in the Irish censuses of the nineteenth... more This paper uses the extraordinarily rich data on literacy in the Irish censuses of the nineteenth century to explore some of the gender and linguistic characteristics of reading ability in the Irish population. A final version of this paper was published in 'Literacy, Language and Reading in Nineteenth-Century Ireland', edited by Rebecca Barr, Sarah-Anne Buckley and Muireann O’Cinneide, Liverpool University Press 2019
A later version of this paper was published in Michael Brown, Catriona Kennedy, John Kirk, and An... more A later version of this paper was published in Michael Brown, Catriona Kennedy, John Kirk, and Andrew Noble (eds.), United Islands? Multi-Lingual Radical Poetry and Song in Britain and Ireland, 1770–1820 (2013)]
An extended review of the 2012 Atlas of the Great Irish Famine
This article surveys the scholarship on Gaelic culture and language shift in nineteenth-century I... more This article surveys the scholarship on Gaelic culture and language shift in nineteenth-century Ireland that was published in the 1990s, and suggests some directions for future research
It has been suggested by historians and other critics that Ireland was the object of unusually in... more It has been suggested by historians and other critics that Ireland was the object of unusually intense interest on the part of the London parliament and of the British public after the Act of Union in 1801. This assumption is often supported by the observation that 114 parliamentary commissions were established to investigate Ireland between 1800 and 1833. This figure is in fact entirely false, the real amount being closer to 12. This article traces the history of this implausible statistic from 1834, when it originated, through to 2007. It suggests some reasons why such an improbable figure was accepted and repeated, and explores the preconceptions among historians about nineteenth-century government and Anglo-Irish relations that are implied by that acceptance.
The most detailed contemporary ethnographic representation of early nineteenth-century Ireland ca... more The most detailed contemporary ethnographic representation of early nineteenth-century Ireland can be found in the reports produced by the Poor Inquiry of 1833-6. Despite their richness, however, these reports remained marginal to contemporary policy discussions and public debate. This is normally, and correctly, attributed to the unpopularity and impracticability of the specific recommendations of the Inquiry. This paper argues that the marginalisation of the reports was also due to their discursive originality. It focusses on the voluminous oral evidence which was collected and published by the Inquiry. This evidence was taken in public from large groups representing all social classes, and much of it was printed verbatim. This method was unique among state reports of the nineteenth century in the United Kingdom, and unusual in social discourse more generally. It emerged from an equally unusual conception of truth as social consensus, a theory which the Inquiry adopted in order to overcome what it saw as the socially fragmented nature of representation in Ireland.
One of the most fundamental cultural shifts of the last few centuries in Ireland was the replacem... more One of the most fundamental cultural shifts of the last few centuries in Ireland was the replacement of Irish by English as the spoken language. The effects of language shift have often been evoked in cultural commentary on contemporary Ireland, but there is no sustained analysis of the subject. In contrast, far more has been written about the causes of the shift, but here also there is much that remains unclear.
In 1997, during the commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the Great Irish Famine, the Britis... more In 1997, during the commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the Great Irish Famine, the British Prime Minister of the time, Tony Blair, issued an apology on behalf of the British state. According to the statement, That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy. The question of state response has indeed been the central political question in discussions of the Irish Famine. Ireland at the time formed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, governed from London by a parliament in which Irish representatives were a minority. The perceived failure of the government and parliament in its responsibilities towards Ireland during the Famine became a central element in the mass political movements in favour of devolution or independence which dominated Irish politics in the later nineteenth century and which untimately led to independence.
Reviews of Forgetful Remembrance by Niall O Ciosain
Cultural and Social History, 2008
Review of Guy Beiner's Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory (... more Review of Guy Beiner's Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory (University of Wisconsin Press) by Niall Ó Ciosáin.
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Papers by Niall O Ciosain
Open Access at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/04308778.2021.1896178
Reviews of Forgetful Remembrance by Niall O Ciosain
Open Access at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/04308778.2021.1896178