Bilingualism and the Death of the Dual Tradition in Celia de Fréine’s Imram ¦ Odyssey

Keating, Kenneth

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-51112-2_6

Bilingualism and the Death of the Dual Tradition in Celia de Fréine’s Imram ¦ Odyssey

Kenneth Keating³

Chapter
First Online: 20 March 2017

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Part of the book series: New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature ((NDIIAL))

Abstract

Chapter 6 focuses on the bilingual poet and dramatist Celia de Fréine and her first dual-language collection imram ¦ odyssey (2006). This chapter contends that imram ¦ odyssey represents an explicit engagement with the Irish-language and English-language traditions of contemporary Irish poetry. It is argued that the linguistic structure and literary content of this collection function to blur the divisions between both traditions, and thus to challenge the continued marginalisation of Irish-language poetry in criticism and publishing. In order to achieve this, de Fréine forges connections to early Irish immrama, modern Irish-language poetry, early Anglo-Saxon literature, and the work of Paul Muldoon and Michael Hartnett, foregrounding the permeability of the borders between these languages and literary traditions and the interdependence of both sides of this supplementary relationship.

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Notes

1.
Ariel Dorfman, “The Wandering Bigamists of Language”, in Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and Creativity, ed. Isabelle de Courtivron (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 31.
2.
Isabelle de Courtivron, Introduction, in Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and Creativity, ed. de Courtivron, 2.
3.
Doris Sommer, Bilingual Aesthetics: A Sentimental Education (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2004), xix.
4.
Sommer, Bilingual Aesthetics, xi.
5.
Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 7.
6.
Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, 8.
7.
Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, 10.
8.
Sommer, Bilingual Aesthetics, 68.
9.
Alan Titley, “Middle Earth: Poetry in Irish at Mid Century”, Irish University Review 42.1 (2012): 72.
10.
Thomas Kinsella, The Dual Tradition: An Essay on Poetry and Politics in Ireland (Manchester: Carcanet,1995), 4.
11.
Kinsella, The Dual Tradition, 5.
12.
Máire Mhac an tSaoi, “Minority Culture”, review of Cruth an Daonnaí, by Willem M. Roggeman, Órain Ghaoil, Amhráin Ghrá, by Meg Bateman, Leaca Liombó, by Máire Áine Nic Ghearailt, Poems in English and Irish, by Rita Kelly, An Sagart Pinc, by Eithne Strong, and Ceol Maidí Rámha, by Micheál Ó Ciarmhaic, The Poetry Ireland Review 30 (1990): 96.
13.
Louis De Paor, “Disappearing Language: Translations from the Irish”, The Poetry Ireland Review 51 (1996): 61.
14.
De Paor, “Disappearing Language”, 62.
15.
De Paor, “Disappearing Language”, 62.
16.
Gearóid Mac Lochlainn, Sruth Teangacha: Rogha Filíochta / Stream of Tongues: Selected Poetry (Connemara: Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2002), 187.
17.
De Paor, “Disappearing Language”, 63.
18.
Gréagóir Ó Dúill, “Making a Difference”, review of Gile na Gile and The Nitpicking of Cranes, by Paddy Bushe, and An Góstfhear / The Ghost Man, by Zhang Ye, Yu Jianghong and Paddy Bushe, The Poetry Ireland Review 87 (2006): 92.
19.
Celia de Fréine, “On the Border of Memory: Childhood in a Divided Ireland”, New Hibernia Review 8.1 (2004): 11–12.
20.
De Fréine, “On the Border of Memory”, 17–18.
21.
Celia de Fréine, “Writing Poetry in Irish”, in Poetry: Reading it, Writing it, Publishing it, ed. Jessie Lendennie (Clare: Salmon Poetry, 2009), 88.
22.
De Fréine, “Writing Poetry in Irish”, 89.
23.
H. P. A. Oskamp, The Voyage of Máel Dúin: A Study in Early Irish Voyage Literature Followed by an Edition of Immram curaig Máele Dúin from the Yellow Book of Lecan in Trinity College, Dublin (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1970), 12.
24.
Ruth P. M. Lehmann, Early Irish Verse (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), 5.
25.
Osborn Bergin, “Bardic Poetry”, Journal of the Ivernian Society 19–20 (1913): 164.
26.
Seán Ó Tuama, and Thomas Kinsella, réamhrá/introduction to An Duanaire: 1600–1900: Poems of the Dispossessed, ed. Seán Ó Tuama, trans. Thomas Kinsella (Dublin: Foras na Gaeilge, 2002), xix.
27.
Ó Tuama and Kinsella, An Duanaire, xxv.
28.
Bergin, “Bardic Poetry”, 217.
29.
Bergin, “Bardic Poetry”, 218–19.
30.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976), 98.
31.
Lehmann, Early Irish Verse, 3.
32.
Kinsella, The Dual Tradition, 7.
33.
Robin Flower, The Irish Tradition (Dublin: Lilliput, 1994), 73.
34.
Lehmann, Early Irish Verse, 3–4.
35.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 141.
36.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 144.
37.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 145.
38.
Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 103.
39.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 154.
40.
Derrida, Of Grammatology, 155.
41.
Celia de Fréine, “Mother Tongue”, in Scarecrows at Newtownards (Dublin: Scotus Press, 2005), 73. All references to texts from Scarecrows at Newtownards will be made parenthetically under the abbreviation SN.
42.
De Fréine, “On the Border of Memory”, 18.
43.
De Fréine, “On the Border of Memory”, 19.
44.
Jonathan M. Wooding, ed., The Otherworld in Early Irish Literature: An Anthology of Criticism (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000), ix.
45.
Manuela Palacios, review of Aibítir Aoise ¦ Alphabet of an Age, by Celia de Fréine, Estudios Irlandeses 7 (2012): 197.
46.
Celia de Fréine, imram ¦ odyssey (Galway: Arlen House, 2010), 15. All references to texts from imram ¦ odyssey will be made parenthetically under the abbreviation i¦o.
47.
Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Pharaoh’s Daughter, trans. Ciaran Carson et al. (Oldcastle, Co. Meath: Gallery Press, 1990), 155.
48.
John Goodby, Irish Poetry since 1950: From Stillness into History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 260.
49.
Goodby, Irish Poetry since 1950, 260.
50.
Wooding, The Otherworld in Early Irish Literature, xiv–xv.
51.
Robert Marken, “Paul Muldoon’s ‘Juggling a Red-Hot Half-Brick in an Old Sock’: Poets in Ireland Renovate the English-Language Sonnet”, Éire-Ireland 24.1 (1989): 83.
52.
Marken, “Paul Muldoon’s ‘Juggling a Red-Hot Half-Brick in an Old Sock’”, 87.
53.
Paul Muldoon, To Ireland, I: An Abecedary of Irish Literature (London: Faber, 2000), 87.
54.
Paul Muldoon, Poems: 1968–1998 (London: Faber, 2001), 85, 94–102.
55.
Laura O’Connor, “The Bilingual Routes of Paul Muldoon / Pól Ó Maoldúin”, Irish Studies Review 19.2 (2011): 136.
56.
David Wheatley, “The Aistriúchán Cloak: Paul Muldoon and the Irish Language”, New Hibernia Review 5.4 (2001): 125–6.
57.
Wheatley, “The Aistriúchán Cloak”, 126.
58.
Colin A. Ireland, “Some Analogues of the Old English Seafarer from Hiberno-Latin Sources”, in The Otherworld in Early Irish Literature, ed. Wooding, 143.
59.
Thomas Owen Clancy, “Subversion at Sea: Structure, Style and Intent in the Immrama”, in The Otherworld in Early Irish Literature, ed. Wooding, 203.
60.
Clancy, “Subversion at Sea: Structure, Style and Intent in the Immrama”, 204.
61.
Wheatley, “The Aistriúchán Cloak”, 126.
62.
Oskamp, The Voyage of Máel Dúin, 75.
63.
For a discussion of Muldoon’s use of references to Native American culture and history see Jacqueline McCurry, “‘S’Crap’: Colonialism Indicted in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon”, Éire-Ireland 27.3 (1992): 92–109.
64.
Muldoon, Poems: 1968–1998, 161. De Fréine’s text may also contain an allusion to the Irish tale of St Brigid’s cloak, which was described as an ever-expanding garment used to cover a vast amount of land in order to gain enough from the King of Leinster on which to build a convent.
65.
Michael Hartnett, Collected Poems (Oldcastle, Co. Meath: Gallery Press, 2001), 147.

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Kenneth Keating

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Keating, K. (2017). Bilingualism and the Death of the Dual Tradition in Celia de Fréine’s Imram ¦ Odyssey . In: Contemporary Irish Poetry and the Canon. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51112-2_6

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51112-2_6
Published: 20 March 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51111-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51112-2
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