Irish Orientalism

"British writers from Cambrensis to Spenser depicted Ireland as a remote borderland inhabited by wild descendants of Asian Scythians - barbarians to the ancient Greeks. Contemporaneous Irish writers likewise borrowed classical traditions, imagining the Orient as an ancient homeland. Lennon traces the influence of Irish Orientalism through origin legends, philology, antiquarianism, and historiography into Irish literature and culture, exploring the works of Keating, O'Flaherty, Swift, Vallancey, Sheridan, Moore, Croker, Owenson, Mangan, de Vere, and others. He explores a key moment of Irish Orientalism - the twentieth-century, Celtic Revival - discussing the works of Gregory, Casement, Connolly, and Joyce, but focusing on Theosophist writers W. B. Yeats, George Russell, James Stephens, and James Cousins."--BOOK JACKET.