Periodicals in Northern Ireland: Uncertain Forms

Abstract

Many Northern Irish periodicals of the mid-twentieth century are cast in the little magazine genre. However they sometimes carry larger ambitions than the genre can fulfill. Moreover, in cases where the genre is more substantial, the contents sometimes fail to live up to expectations. These pressures upon their genres are linked to the search for an audience. They arise from a frustrated desire on the part of their producers to exceed either the potential of the audiences available to them or the limitations of the genre that they have chosen to use. Edna Longley (1988, 21) observes that “Irish Literary Studies have generally suffered from too much ‘context’ rather than too little.” However, Longley also observes elsewhere (1990, 11) that “it is absurd to contend that Northern Ireland and the Republic have had identical socio-political experiences since 1922, or since 1968.” I will discuss these periodicals in terms of the interplay between the problems in achieving a sustained audience for periodicals in the province and the difficulties encountered by editors in maintaining steady adherence to particular periodical genres. Similar tensions appear in the periodicals of other separated communities inside Britain.