Gothic Politics and the Mythology of the Vampire: Brendan Kennelly’s Postcolonial Inversions in Cromwell: A Poem

Abstract

Verses from the epic poem Cromwell: A Poem (1983), by Irish poet Brendan Kennelly, account for the perception of Oliver Cromwell and the atrocities committed during his brief time of power in Ireland in the mid-seventeenth century. Delimiting a definite postcolonial awareness, the 254 verses, many of which are loosely structured sonnets, depict extreme violence and the difficult issue of colonial oppression in the explicit terms of grotesque horror and also in the implicit symbolism suggested in and by vampirism and its associated rites and rituals. The poem, in its use of vampirism as a metaphorical structure, and through the generation of complex vampire figures, functions to dismantle traditional assumptions about history and identity in an Irish postcolonial context. It reimagines the complex persona of Cromwell and at times transports him to modern-day Ireland. In doing so, it forces a clash of narrative and historical perspectives on the man often blamed for over three centuries of national violence.