Abstract
Eimar O’Duffy (1893–1935) is a writer who has been marginalised in Irish literary history. His first novel The Wasted Island (1919) critiques revolutionary movements in Ireland leading up to the Easter Rising. Perhaps because of this dissident view, it has received little critical attention. Most critics have examined The Wasted Island as a historical source, leaving its literary and philosophical qualities unexplored. This chapter examines those qualities, arguing that O’Duffy accomplished far more than a thinly veiled historical account. Using José Medina’s analysis of approaches to epistemic pluralism, Keating proposes that The Wasted Island is an important literary source with which to discuss marginalised voices of the period, establishing a past–present relationship that can enrich discussions about the Easter Rising.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Works Cited
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.
Bolton, Jonathan. “Blighted Beginnings”: Coming of Age in Independent Ireland. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2010.
Flanagan, Frances. Remembering the Irish Revolution: Dissent, Culture, and Nationalism in the Irish Free State. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Foster, R. F. Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890–1923. London: Allen Lane, 2014.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. Vol. 1. New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1990.
Foucault, Michel, et al. “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976. London: Allen Lane, 2003.
Gilbert, Thomas. “Fact, Fun and Fancy.” The Spectator 143, no. 5292 (1929): 824–825.
Hand, Derek. A History of the Irish Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Hogan, Robert G. Eimar O’Duffy. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1972.
Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland: The Literature of a Modern Nation. London: Random House, 2009.
Medina, José. “Toward a Foucaultian Epistemology of Resistance: Counter-Memory, Epistemic Friction, and Guerrilla Pluralism.” Foucault Studies 12 (2011): 9–35.
Mercier, Vivian. “The Satires of Eimar O’Duffy.” The Bell 4, no. 12 (1946): 325–336.
O’Duffy, Eimar. The Wasted Island. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920.
———. King Goshawk and the Birds. London: Macmillan, 1926.
———. The Spacious Adventures of the Man in the Street. London: Macmillan, 1928.
———. Asses in Clover. London: Putnam, 1933.
Smyth, Gerry. Decolonisation and Criticism: The Construction of Irish Literature. London: Pluto, 1998.
Wall, Mervyn. A Disenchanted Island. The Irish Times, 19 May 1967, 10.
Welch, Robert. “O’Duffy, Eimar [Ultan].” In The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature, 426. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Keating, J. (2018). The Wasted Island: Epistemic Friction in Revolutionary Ireland. In: Villar-Argáiz, P. (eds) Irishness on the Margins. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74567-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74567-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-74566-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-74567-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)