Lloyd Article

So you weren't kidding when you said that Lloyd was going to be tricky. I tried reading it online but it was more so something that needed to be done on a couch, in bed, at work , in the bath. Yep, it wasn't something for one session either it was an article to read and come back to and look over and dwell a little. It was nice to rehash some of the things I learned about Irish history (in my History of Northern Ireland class) and see how someone could relate those events to a topic seemingly unrelated. So besides noticing the fact that Lloyd loves the term "insofar" heres what I've gathered:

So ever since I took this history class I have noticed a generalization on my part, I think of Ireland's history as pure turmoil, you know, the issues with religion, nationalism, unionism, famine, dirty protests and so on. Lloyd expresses that this is usually the generalization made by most , he also states that the violence was more of a "struggle of and Irish people forming itself in sporadic but connected risings against British domination." (125) By this Lloyd implies that this was not violence in vain but one with a purpose and a drive, Ireland was under British dominance and not unlike other forming nations, needed to use violence to get a point across. Lloyd also states that "Violence is understood as an atavistic and disruptive principle" (125) but it seems that Ireland was not given the justification of being a nation under a rule that it wished not to be under.

The above instability was one of the reasons, Lloyd says, people usually give for the inadequacy of the Irish novel. The general instability and violence was not the proper breeding ground for a novel of quality. I feel that what is implied here is that, since the Irish weren't conforming to the English ways it could never have success with writing. The general explosiveness of the Ireland was not the type of environment in which a proper novel could thrive. On the contrary it seems to me that most novels are based on the current going ons of the surroundings of the writer ( at a look at post 9/11 novels i.e. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) and how, in a situation tainted with violence can one possibly write a proper novel? It doesn't seem that the novel was seen as a service to a nation by its critics. I feel that a novel's purpose, aside from expressing the feelings of the author) is to bind people with common thoughts and this was obviously not taken into consideration when the success of the 19th century novel was dissected.

This dissection and classification seems to me through Lloyds writing to be judged by some (hoydy-toydy ) Englishmen with wigs and what not (that's just what I see don't ask. I've always wondered what makes a "classic" a "classic" are there criteria that must be matched? Is there a rubric out there? Now, looking back we think of Wilde and JOyce to be classic but was it apparently not always this way. When did it become so? I think that this judgement can easily be made by the government. It seems to be that too often in history have books not just been frown upon but banned all together by a government. Soviet Russia was well known for banning books that disagreed with their ideals Nobel Prize winner and novelist, Boris Pasternak (Dr. Zhivago) was made to turn down his Prize by the pressure of the Soviet government for that exact reason. Even more so it is evident when a more "established" nation discredits writers from less established ones, and this seemed to be the exact case with Britain and Ireland during the 19th century.

In the end I realized that I have never thought of the importance of knowing the history of a nation and relating it to its art forms, in this case it writing. It was fun thinking back to that history class I took and looking at it from a different angle I without a doubt thought about the major events I learned about and thought about how those could have contributed to Irelands literary world.