Introduction

Hello and welcome, everyone. My name is Lacey and I am an undergraduate student at SUNY Fredonia, where I major in English. This blog is the final project for my British Literary Landmarks class.

Over the past semester, we have studied how the body and/or gender is scripted in the British tradition, and how this interpretation has changed over time through historical events and changes in philosophy. Because the texts we read were written by authors who are entirely British, I inevitably became curious about how the literature of other English-speaking nations colonized by Britain (such as the Irish) would fit in under the heading of "British Literature." Or, I supposed, it was possible that the colonial/post-colonial literature would not.

With this in mind, I will be proving that Irish literature, despite how much her authors may not like this, are part of the British tradition. They are English speakers who wrote (and write) in the same language, a language colored by centuries of British thought as proposed in her writing. This link through the language means that the Irish have inevitably received some similarities with the British, colonial and post-colonial alike.

In order to prove these connections, I will be studying the similarities between the two literatures using three of the most famous Irish writers: James Joyce (specifically Dubliners), William Butler Yeats, and Seamus Heaney and connecting them to some texts we've read this semester, including: Shakespeare's Macbeth,  Romantic poetry, Charlotte Bronte's Villette, and others. I hope to show that although Irish literature deserves its own, very proud title, it is inextricably related to a language with literature that has similarities in ideas to theirs. I hope you enjoy.