Paper short abstract:

The claim that Ireland exhibits a distinctive intellectual micro-climate is advanced. Attention is paid to the Catholic hinterland of the Irish imagination (although its Protestant counterpart is considered). The influence exerted by the image of the island within this stream of thought is surveyed.

Paper long abstract:

Reflecting upon the Irish imagination, one historian, Oliver MacDonagh, concluded that ‘the image of the island, with the surrounding water carving out a territorial identity, has been compelling’. ‘This is unsurprising,’ McDonagh mused; ‘from its Homeric beginnings European literature has been infused with this physical-geographical symbol of separateness, mystery and peculiarity.’ This paper likewise advances (at times implicitly) the thesis that Ireland exhibits a distinctive intellectual micro-climate owing to its island locus and identity. Particular attention is paid to the Roman Catholic hinterland of the Irish mind (although its Protestant counterpart is not overlooked). The conceptual influence exerted by the image of the island within this consequential stream of thought is surveyed. Consideration of the formidable ideological force exerted by visions of the island’s national saint, St. Patrick (a former slave believed to have liberated the island from paganism), and of the pervasive allure of hallowed Patrician shrines upon the island – St. Patrick’s Purgatory, situated upon an island in Lough Derg, Co. Donegal, being a prime example – serves to illustrate how the image of the island is bound-up with the idea of imprisonment within the Irish Catholic imagination. A recurring theme within much Irish thought is consequently illuminated: the conceptual terraforming of the prison-cell into an island and of Ireland into a grim, giant prison, typically of either British or (intriguingly) of Vatican construction. But the Catholic mind has also envisioned the island as a sanctuary; as a refuge from Protestant, liberal modernity. This facilitates an appreciation of how visions of the island are related to the concept of imperialism. One of the paper’s primary aims, in fact, is to illustrate how the spectre of Vatican imperialism has troubled Irish minds, Protestant and Roman Catholic, just as much as the perceived threat of its much-maligned, British variant.