Literature of Ireland

Irish literature comprises writings in the Irish, Latin, and English (including Ulster Scots) languages on the island of Ireland. The earliest recorded Irish writing dates from the seventh century and was produced by monks writing in both Latin and Early Irish. In addition to scriptural writing, the monks of Ireland recorded both poetry and mythological tales. There is a large surviving body of Irish mythological writing, including tales such as The Táin and Mad King Sweeny.

The English language was introduced to Ireland in the thirteenth century, following the Norman Conquest of Ireland. The Irish language, however, remained the dominant language of Irish literature down to the nineteenth century, despite a slow decline which began in the seventeenth century with the expansion of English power. The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a rapid replacement of Irish by English in the greater part of the country. At the end of the century, however, cultural nationalism displayed a new energy, marked by the Gaelic Revival (which encouraged a modern literature in Irish) and more generally by the Irish Literary Revival.

The Anglo-Irish literary tradition found its first great exponent in Jonathan Swift. Writers such as Lawrence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan are often claimed for Ireland, though their lives and their works were essentially English. The same can be said of Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and C.S. Lewis, prominent writers who left Ireland to make a life in England. More recognisably "Irish" writers included Louis MacNeice, George Bernard Shaw (though he spent most of his life in England) and W. B. Yeats. The descendants of Scottish settlers in Ulster formed the Ulster-Scots writing tradition, having an especially strong tradition of rhyming poetry.

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