Why is Ireland so fecking great?

Why do Irish writers so consistently punch above their weight in the literature world?

I used to think it was because they were poor and weren't able to afford televisions and the internet and so on, thus, they avoided the brain scrambling effects of modern entertainment products and preserved a story telling tradition...... but I don't think that's accurate.

maybe its because they're relatively new to the English language and still find novelty in it (like nabokov did).

Why don't similar countries, like Scotland (similar population, celtic background, chip on their shoulder about the English etc etc) have a consistently healthy literature "scene"?

by "Irish" I mean people who were actually raised in ireland, not "american Irish"

any thoughts?

Ireland isn’t poor, especially not nowadays.

Think it’s the tragic history and the centralization of life around Dublin.

Tfw no redhead Irish gf..

Why do Anglos hate the Irish? I feel like the answer to that question is somewhat related to your question.

she's not white

other countries (again scotland) have tragedy in their history and their cultural endeavours are based around metropolitan areas (edinburgh glasgow). But they produce little of note.

>I used to think it was because they were poor and weren't able to afford televisions and the internet and so on, thus, they avoided the brain scrambling effects of modern entertainment products and preserved a story telling tradition...... but I don't think that's accurate.

Well aren't we blessed that such an ignorant gobshite fancies our writing.

nigger

We had to dehuminse them as they were our first proto-empire project. then they became immigrants who "took our jobs" etc. We're basically easily led towards hatred of others by toffs.

>Well aren't we blessed

luck of the irish

Centuries of occupation caused them to value their mythology and culture in order to preserve their identity, giving them a rich source to draw on for their literature. Irish mythology, whether they be embracing it or explicitly reacting against it (like Joyce) has shaped the literature to a huge extent.

the word for beautiful, composed, and fictional are all the same.

I don't really care anymore at this point mate

Probably has a lot to do with there being so many Irish Americans and America commanding the shape of culture for two centuries now. Anything cultural must be acceptable to americans to be important from jimmy joyce to lars von trier. Americans have the most advanced tastes and the rest of the world is just so much fodder for our consumption.

W-was it the Catholicism?

the reason why there's so american irish people in power is because the irish were already organised for public speaking and block by block campaigning. they knew how to run a constituency, unlike the anglo americans, but that's a result of already present talent, not an explanation of the origin of the talent.

No they were in power because they spammed the major metro areas during the various famines and crises. The Irish were a demographic shift and the zeitgeist reflected that. It is nothing innate to the irish. The Irish are only important insofar as they are appealing to americans with like 1/64 Irish genes.

>kiss my blarney stone, poofter

dirty left-footers?

religion is always used as a pretext. nobody in power actually takes it seriously (apart from king henry vi and James vi and i, who were both fucking mental)

Christina Hendricks isn't even of Irish descent

>that woman
>white

>No they were in power because they spammed the major metro areas during the various famines and crises.
no, they took jobs which required a proficiency at oratory, and took those jobs in metropolitan cities because of block by block organisation. this isn't even the rest of the world history that you ignore except thinking the egyptians are aliens and hitler did everything, americunt, this is your own history in major founding cities.
>various famines and crises
you mean between the 16th and 20th C? yes, they have been running your country since there were still more natives and was not actually a country there, though they maintain it's since the 5th C or so, and usually they gained that power through rhetorical skills.

that doesn't explain their rhetorical skills, merely highlight they exist above the anglo norm.

>The Irish are only important insodar as they are appealing to americans
i think your brain will hurt enough learning about just american history like your compatriots, without filling you in on the other 80% of the last millennium of canon.

Say what you will, America is the devourer, the Shiva of this era.

thanks!

america's the sticky kid with probable autism who thinks he's an invisible dragon

Irelands only had wealth the past 20 or so years

Edinburgh was basically the capital of the Enlightenment: Adam Smith, David Hume, etc.

Scotland's only contribution to literature over the past 50 years has been ian rankin and irvine fucking welsh

There is something uniquely playful and vulgar yet also reverent and melancholy in the Irish character. Irish stories often center around finding joy and spiritual meaning despite bitter material circumstances. Life is portrayed as hard and mean, but repressed beneath it all is usually a kernel of some of the most saccharine sentimentality this side of Dickens. To non-Irish native English speakers their diction is associated with warmth and informality, but it comes with more foreignness and melody than most other regional dialects. The combination of coherent familiarity and inaccessible difference is especially pleasing.

I particularly like the way the Irish portray the fantastic and supernatural. Magic usually isn't presented as a big loud product of an obviously fictional universe, but more like something mysterious that's always been lurking in the background of our world and has chosen just this moment to brush against our very actual and present reality. When J.R.R. Tolkien visited Ireland he described it as a profoundly evil country, and its evilness was only held in check by the kindness of its people and the country's religious nature. I completely agree, especially in light of Ireland's wild pagan roots, which are constantly bubbling up in the most unexpected of places.

Really Ireland is an incredibly repressive country, but unlike, for example, England, it is singularly bad at holding back its emotional and psychological undercurrents. Its subjugation, self-imposed or otherwise, gives way to wit and understatement, which is subtlety, which is the basis of all great art. And then when the repression fails and the subconscious explodes, the explosion is transcendent

Corned beef makes you good at writing

nice answer

Genuinely great post. You really nailed it

Wtf? I love Ireland now

>who are Iain Banks and Alaisdar Gray
Irvine Welsh is fucking chuck palahnuik tier please stop treating him like he's our only writer.

I'm not even arguing with your premise, Scotland has produced jack shit of quality literature since Scott, but please pick better examples than rankin and welsh

There's no point trying to produce quality writers when you've already given the world its best poet

>When J.R.R. Tolkien visited Ireland he described it as a profoundly evil country
I'd like to know more about this.

Wut about Russia m8?

I wouldn't be surprised if he's referring to Ireland's inability to catechize and how flexible their clergy become to grave matters when it involves the English.

your very kind user

It's a strange place. Worryingly the average IQ here is 93. Pretty much every Irish intellectual ends up feeling alienated living here. I like the place lot and wouldn't want to be born anywhere else but the average Irish person is an anti-intellectual.

Throughout my time living in Ireland I've been hounded by people who felt insulted by me for using "big words". Last time it was the word "domestic".

Is this a Veeky Forums meme? Ireland punching above their weight?

It's because this place is such a shithole that we're masters of escapism.

>Scotland isn't as Veeky Forums as Ireland
>Forgetting this country gave the world Robert Burns, James Barrie, Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, David Hume, George MacDonald etc.

>tfw Irish but shit writer
>tfw other people you know are better writers without trying
just kms desu

...

exactly, not as Veeky Forums

Don’t worry, boys, the future of Irish lit is in safe hands.

>Interviewer: W.B. Yeats said that ‘There is no great literature without nationality, and no great nationality without literature.’ Do you think that the term “Irish writer” is a useful category when describing your identity as a writer?

>Sally Rooney: I was born in Ireland and I still live here, so it would be hard to argue that I’m not an “Irish writer,” but I don’t think that’s what Yeats meant. Big fan of Mussolini, W.B. Yeats. I just feel like we don’t talk about that enough. In conclusion, if there really is no great literature without nationality, I can safely say I’m not interested in writing great literature.

come now, if we're going to pol it up, go with behan
>Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.

>tfw no redhead gf

>Ireland is an incredibly repressive country
lol. so repressed

What about they being under England's rule?