Imagining Ireland's Pasts describes how various authors addressed the history of early modern Ireland over four centuries and explains why they could not settle on an agreed narrative. It shows how conflicting interpretations broke frequently along denominational lines, but that authors were also influenced by ethnic, cultural, and political considerations, and by whether they were resident in Ireland or living in exile.
Imagining Ireland's Pasts details how authors extolled the merits of their progenitors, offered hope and guidance to the particular audience they addressed, and disputed opposing narratives. The author shows how competing scholars, whether contributing to vernacular histories or empirical studies, became transfixed by the traumatic events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as they sought to explain either how stability had finally been achieved, or how the descendants of those who had been wronged might secure redress.
1: The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Writing of Ireland's History in the Sixteenth Century 2: Composing counter-narratives in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 3: New Histories for a New Ireland 4: The 1641 Rebellion and Ireland's Contested Pasts 5: Eighteenth-Century Aristocratic Histories of Ireland During the Sixteenth and Seventeeth Centuries 6: Enlightenment Historians of Ireland and Their Critics 7: The Vernacular Alternative: Catholic and Protestant Popular Reconsiderations of Ireland's Early Modern History During the Age of Revolutions 8: Re-imagining Ireland's Early Modern Past: The Young Ireland Agenda, Dissident Views, and the Catholic Alternative 9: Re-imagining Ireland's Early Modern Past During the Later Nineteenth Century 10: Fresh Unionist Reappraisals of Ireland's History During the Early Modern Centuries 11: The Birth and Early Demise of a Liberal View of Ireland's Early Modern Past 12: The Failure of the Imagination Concerning Ireland's Past
Now a Professor Emeritus, Nicholas Canny was Professor of History at the NUI Galway, Founding Director of the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities, and President of the Royal Irish Academy. He is the author of Making Ireland British, 1580-1650 (OUP, 2001), which won the Irish Historical Research Prize, 2001, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Atlantic World (OUP, 2011), and The Origins of Empire (OUP, 1998) amongst other publications.
Reviews for Imagining Ireland's Pasts: Early Modern Ireland through the Centuries
A landmark contribution to Irish historiography, it is essential reading for anyone interested in how Irish history has been remembered and used to serve present purposes down through the centuries. * Marian Lyons, The Irish Times * Thanks to Canny's compendious survey , histories which made a limited impact when first they appeared will now gain more. Those who reflected on the mayhem sought to fit it into patterns already provided by humanist, classical, providential or apocalyptic templates. All this Canny traces methodically. * Toby Barnard, Times Literary Supplement * This is an ambitious and excellent account of Irish historical writing on a specific era and is, essentially, a reflection on the development of an enduring strand of Irish intellectual life over four centuries. * John Gibney, History Ireland * The book provides a brilliant picture of Irish historical writings as sharing continuities across the longue duree even as they remained heterogeneous, contested and deeply of their moment. * Sarah Covington, The Renaissance Quarterly *
- Winner of Shortlisted, Michel Deon Prize, Royal Irish Academy.
