The Irish Renaissance

The Irish Renaissance (or Celtic Revival) was an art, handicrafts and literary movement of the early 20th century that proposed a return to Irish language, tradition and culture. It was marked by a nationalist spirit and a revival of Ireland's pride in its Gaelic heritage. It was a backlash to centuries of English oppression and suppression, from as far back as the 1367 ‘Statute of Kilkenny' which proscribed Irish language and culture for Irish inhabitants who were of the English "race".

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The Statutes of Kilkenny was a reproof of the adoption by English settlers of Irish language, manners and customs. It forbade the "native" English from intermarriage to the Irish, adoption of Irish children and the use of the Irish language. Those assimilated English settlers who has never spoken English had to learn it or risk losing their land and possessions. Further, it mandated the separation of the English and Irish churches, insisting "no Irishman of the nations of the Irish be admitted into any cathedral or collegiate church ... amongst the English of the land".

Examples of the literature that came from the Revival include J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World and James Joyce’s Ulysses. (Super bonus points if you’ve actually read that. The only works I’ve found more knobbly on the brain are by Gertrude Stein.) The poet William Butler Yeats, who co-founded The Abbey Theater (the first national theater of Ireland) won the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature for writing poetry that gave "expression to the spirit of a whole nation."