Textual Anthropology and the ‘Imagined Community’

Abstract

This paper enquires into ‘textual anthropology’ as a new way of reading Irish texts. It has been prompted by two papers given in Sydney last October by Antony Tatlow, Professor of Comparative Literature at TCD, and a passage from the Introduction to Declan Kiberd’s Irish Classics (London: Granta Books, 2000), p. xiii, where Professor Kiberd says: ‘Because there were two powerful cultures in constant contention in Ireland after 1600, neither was able to achieve absolute hegemony. One consequence was that no single tradition could ever become official: the only persistent tradition in Irish culture was the largely unsuccessful attempt to subvert all claims to make any tradition official. In conditions of ongoing cultural confrontation, most of the great works of literature produced on either side took on something of the character of anthropology.’ In addition to testing this contention, this paper will enquire into issues such as: To what extent and in what ways does textual anthropology relate to previous approaches to reading Irish texts? What presuppositions underpin textual anthropology? and What benefits accrue from and what limitations attend such an approach?