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Ireland Art and Culture

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The earliest Irish art is found in carvings on megalithic monuments dating from 2500 - 2000 BC. In early historic times, Celtic art predominated, reaching its peak in illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells.

While the basic Celtic patterns remain, European influences such as Viking, Romanesque and Gothic styles are seen in work executed later than the 9th century. The large, distinctly Irish, stone crosses, seen across the country date from the 9th and 10th centuries.

Ireland Art

From the mid-17th century, decorative arts and large-scale building flourished under the influence of contemporary European trends.

Literature in English:

Among the best known writers of this period this period were W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, James Stephens, John Millington Synge, George Russell and George Moore all of whom lived and worked in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Jonathan Swift

Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral and one of the greatest satirists of his or any other times. His 'Gulliver's Travels' is now known mostly in expurgated versions for children. His satirical venom is displayed in, e.g. 'A Modest Proposal' for the relief of poverty and hunger in Ireland by the cooking of surplus children. Inspired by his tow female muses , 'Stella' (Hester Johnson, q.v.) and 'Vanessa' (Esther Vanhomrigh). Founded a hospital by his will- as he wrote in his sardonic 'Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift' 'He gave the little wealth he had / To build a house for fools and mad :/ To show, by one satiric touch , / No nation wanted it so much'.

Jonathan Swift's (1667 - 1745) grave in Dublin's St. Patrick's cathedral

He wrote his own eptiaph which was on his orders engraved and gilded in large letters and stands above the place of his burial: in translation it reads 'Here is laid the body of Jonathan Swift.....where savage indignation can no longer tear his heart. Depart, wayfarer, and imitate if you can a man who to his utmost strenuously championed liberty'.

Other distinguished modern Irish writers and poets include Flann O'Brien (1911-1966), Frank O'Connor (1903-1966), Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), Mary Lavin (1912-1996), Thomas Kinsella (b.1928), Seamus Heaney (b. 1939), Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) and John McGahern (b. 1934).

Ireland's theatrical works have been internationally renowned for even longer than her books. Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oscar Wilde were all luminaries of the London stage as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries.

More recently, George Bernard Shaw is regarded as one of the great dramatists in the English Language. John Millington Synge, Sean O'Casey, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel and Hugh Leonard have also achieved international success. But perhaps the most enigmatic figure of Irish letters was the internationally acclaimed dramatist and novelist Samuel Beckett.

Beckett, Shaw, Yeats and Heaney were all awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Novelist Roddy Doyle is a Booker Prize winner.

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