Irish Life Writing

Although the term life writing could encompass autobiographies, biographies, hagiographies, memoirs, diaries, journals, letters, travelogues, testimonies, and personal essays, Irish writers, especially in the modern era, tend to channel their energies into forms of formal self-examination such as autobiographies and memoirs. It is difficult to assert with confidence when Irish life writing begins: it could be traced back to ancient Irish storytellers’ (seanachaí) insertion of the self into oral narratives. Life writing could be traced back to Saint Patrick’s Confessio from the 5th century, beginning a rich vein of spiritual and religious life writing in Ireland. However, a recognizable nationalist life-writing tradition predominated in the 19th century, with writers attempting to create a story of new nation. Life writing flourished during the early 20th century, reflecting global trends, but also engaging in cultural nationalist debates in Ireland. Autobiography and memoir were key genres for the generation that inaugurated and sustained the Irish Revival, many of whom made an art of the multivolume autobiography. Life writing during these years tended to follow the tradition of activist nationalist exploration, or at least of engaging with and perhaps complicating the equating of the self with the nation, insisting on a link between psychogenesis and sociogenesis. This tendency to see Irish writing through the prism of the nation can overshadow other, just as important definitions, such as class and perceived notions of taste; those who diverged from this established tradition, and those whose overarching interest was simply not inspired by the nation, tended to be excluded from the canon. The incredible upsurge in Irish autobiographical writing since the 1990s is often read as an iteration of the intense public scrutiny of the past that occurred in Ireland. Irish writing, of course, is not bound to the island itself; diasporic voices are integral to Irish literature in general and Irish life writing in particular. Life writing abounds with generic indeterminacy, particularly in Ireland, where the Autobiographical Novel after James Joyce remains in rude good health. Broadly speaking, so much of the important Irish fiction of modern times has been to some degree autobiographical and those works often explore the nature of Irish life writing in a way that critical studies do not. The commingling of fiction and life writing is especially pertinent to the recent resurgence of life writing and its importance in a literary and social context.