The Cabinet of Irish Literature: A Historical Perspective on Irish Anthologies

THE CABINET OF IRISH LITERATURE: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON IRISH ANTHOLOGIES* MARGARET KELLEHER I. THE “CULTURE OF THE EXCERPT” among the flurry of reviews and commentaries that followed the publication of volumes I to III of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing in 1991, those of most enduring interest moved beyond the heat of the moment to a more general reflection on the role of anthologies themselves. Francis Mulhern’s 1993 essay, “A Nation, Yet Again” began, for example, with the cautionary pronouncement, by then all too evident, that “[a]nthologies are strategic weapons in literary politics.”1 Mulhern acknowledged that “authored texts of all kinds—poems, novels, plays, reviews, analyses—play more or less telling parts in a theatre of shifting alliances and antagonisms ,” but he argued for the special rhetorical force of anthologies in their “simulation of self evidence.THE CABINET OF IRISH LITERATURE: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON IRISH ANTHOLOGIES* MARGARET KELLEHER I. THE “CULTURE OF THE EXCERPT” among the flurry of reviews and commentaries that followed the publication of volumes I to III of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing in 1991, those of most enduring interest moved beyond the heat of the moment to a more general reflection on the role of anthologies themselves. Francis Mulhern’s 1993 essay, “A Nation, Yet Again” began, for example, with the cautionary pronouncement, by then all too evident, that “[a]nthologies are strategic weapons in literary politics.”1 Mulhern acknowledged that “authored texts of all kinds—poems, novels, plays, reviews, analyses—play more or less telling parts in a theatre of shifting alliances and antagonisms ,” but he argued for the special rhetorical force of anthologies in their “simulation of self evidence.THE CABINET OF IRISH LITERATURE: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON IRISH ANTHOLOGIES* MARGARET KELLEHER I. THE “CULTURE OF THE EXCERPT” among the flurry of reviews and commentaries that followed the publication of volumes I to III of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing in 1991, those of most enduring interest moved beyond the heat of the moment to a more general reflection on the role of anthologies themselves. Francis Mulhern’s 1993 essay, “A Nation, Yet Again” began, for example, with the cautionary pronouncement, by then all too evident, that “[a]nthologies are strategic weapons in literary politics.”1 Mulhern acknowledged that “authored texts of all kinds—poems, novels, plays, reviews, analyses—play more or less telling parts in a theatre of shifting alliances and antagonisms ,” but he argued for the special rhetorical force of anthologies in their “simulation of self evidence.