Periodicals and the Post-Revolutionary Moment

Abstract

In Louis James’s phrase, “periodicals are cultural clocks by which we tell the time (1982, 365).” Periodicals reflect politics and intellectual climate but they also influence them. Stefan Collini claims (2006, 434) that “periodical journalism in the broadest sense, is not just the intellectual’s natural habitat; it is also the noise made by a culture speaking to itself.” During the post-revolutionary period, certain periodicals, such as Christus Rex, can be seen working to endorse the influence of the cultured elite in Ireland and the power of the church. Others, such as the Bell, provide sites of criticism of the prevailing ethos. There was an intriguing climate for periodical production at this time. The Free State (and, eventually, the Republic) was protected to a degree from such trauma as industrial depressions in the 1930s, direct involvement in the Second World War and the problems arising from postwar reconstruction in other parts of the Archipelago. In the same period, however, Ireland experienced the aftermath of revolution, nationalist hegemony at home, privations during the “Emergency” and, later, exposure to European and global pressures.