'Insubordinate irish' : travellers in the text / Mícheál Ó hAodha.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ó hAodha, Mícheál, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Irish Travellers (Nomadic people).

Irish Travellers (Nomadic people)--Ireland--Social life and customs.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 228 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : New York : Manchester University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book traces a number of common themes relating to the representation of Irish Travellers in Irish popular tradition and how these themes have impacted on Ireland's collective imagination. A particular focus of the book is on the exploration of the Traveller as 'Other', an 'Other' who is perceived as both inside and outside Ireland's collective ideation. Frequently constructed as a group whose cultural tenets are in a dichotomous opposition to those of the 'settled' community, the book demonstrates the ambivalence and complexity of the Irish Traveller 'Other' in the context of a European postcolonial country. Not only have the construction and representation of Travellers always been less stable and 'fixed' than previously supposed, these images have been acted upon and changed by both the Traveller and non-Traveller communities as the situation has demanded. Drawing primarily on little-explored Irish language sources, the book demonstrates the fluidity of what is often assumed as reified or 'fixed'. As evidenced in Irish-language cultural sources, the image of the Traveller is inextricably linked with the very concept of Irish identity itself. They are simultaneously the same and 'Other', and frequently function as exemplars of the hegemony of native Irish culture as set against colonial traditions.

Contents:

Irish travellers and the nineteenth century "others"

The traveller colonised

Irish travellers and the Bardic tradition

Theoretical perspectives and the Irish context

Mapping "difference": Irish travellers and the questionaire

Travellers as countercultural

Travellers in the Irish imaginary: contested terrains

Anti-traveller prejudice: the narrative within the Irish imaginary

The counter-tradition and symbolic inversion

The dichotomy of self and other: some considerations.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 29 May 2026).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781847797834

1847797830

9781781702437

1781702438

9781847794079

1847794076

OCLC:

818847529