Introduction

220
Melanie Swiatloch
Here Ireland’s pagan past and the existing Catholic morals and values meet in a
central conflict. Another important feature is the coming back to aspects of traditional
Gaelic poetry like rhyme scheme, stanza and metre. In contrast to supporters
of the Gaelic Revival authors of the Irish Literary Movement did not choose
Irish as their form of writing (many writers were just not able to speak or write it)
but Hiberno-English 22, a specific variant of English as spoken by the rural population,
and adapted it to their artistic means (ibid. 148ff). At the same time, we find
militant republican writers like Patrick Pearse 23 whose radical approach was soon
questioned by Yeats and later Frank O’Connor and Sean O’Faolain. Their firsthand
experiences – O’Connor, having witnessed both the Anglo-Irish War and
the Civil War, and O’Faolain, having been involved in the IRA himself, allowed
these writers to take a critical look on Troubles policies (Kennedy-Andrews 2006,
239).
The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921-2 changed quite a lot: What the Irish Renaissance
had aimed at was now at least partially achieved – political independence.
Still, the solution was not satisfying for everyone. The separation of Northern
Ireland induced what still eighty-nine years later is clearly visible: a deeply divided
population. In Troubles fiction the focus was now put on the North, and many
Republican writers of the eighties (unlike James Joyce, John Millington Synge or
Lady Gregory) “wrote from positions of defense”, showing the human side of
IRA killers (Keating-Miller 63). At the same time also English writers engaged in
the theme of Northern Irish conflict, mostly in the form of the thriller. In contrast
to the novels from the North, the IRA man here, however, was “simplified and
diabolised” (Kennedy-Andrews 2006, 241). As Elmer Kennedy-Andrews has
noted, “these novelists tended to reproduce the cultural and political views of the
British establishment, thereby reinforcing the hegemonic British discourse regarding
Northern Ireland” (ibid. 241).
Patten describes two trends that took place in Northern Irish fiction. One is
the convention to use realism, the other the “expansion to documentary”, which
according to her are the “result […] of the desire for legitimate or authentic representation
distinguishable from the mass of pulp sensationalism” (Patten 131).
Eureka Street, One by One in the Darkness and Where They Were Missed, written in
1996, 1996 and 2006, feature this documentary style as well. Both McLiam Wilson
and Deirdre Madden were born in the 1960s (1964 and 1960 to be precise), Lucy
Caldwell in 1981, and all belong to the group of postmodern writers Patten men-
22 The origins of Hiberno-English lie in the sixteenth century when the English settled Ireland.
Like all languages of colonial situations also Hiberno-English shows traces of the then dominant
language, Elizabethan English. Furthermore, the English spoken in Ireland adopted many
Gaelic language patterns (vocabulary, loan structures of syntax). Nevertheless, the Hiberno-
English used by Irish poets should not be confused with the actual Irish vernacular (Kosok
149).
23 Patrick Pearse was one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising. He advocated “a myth of blood
sacrifice and mystical notions of Gaelic Ireland” (Kennedy-Andrews 2006, 239).