Nietzsche and Irish modernism [Paperback]

Nietzsche and Irish Modernismdemonstrates how the ideas of the controversial German philosopher played a crucial role in the emergence and evolution of a distinctly Irish brand of modernist culture. Making an essential new contribution to the history of modernism, the book traces the circulation of these ideas through the writings of George Bernard Shaw, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce, as well as through minor works of literature, magazine articles, newspaper debates, public lectures, and private correspondence. These materials reveal a response to Nietzsche that created abiding tensions between Irish cultural production and reigning religious and nationalist orthodoxies, during an anxious period of Home Rule agitation, world war, revolution, civil war, and state building. With its wealth of detail, the book greatly enriches our understanding of modernist culture as a site of convergence between art and politics, indigenous concerns and foreign perspectives.GBNietzsche and Irish Modernismdeftly traces the circulation of the German philosophers ideas in Irish culture during the early years of the twentieth century. In doing so, the book demonstrates how Nietzsches thought inspired new, disruptive modes of writing, which spoke to local historical circumstances and the predicaments of modernity at largePatrick Bixby is Professor of English at Arizona State University

Nietzsche was a scandal, a revelation, an explosive intellectual force. At the time of his death, the German philosopher was hailed widely as a leading emissary of the modern, but his message of cultural transformation resonated nowhere more powerfully than in Ireland.

InNietzsche and Irish Modernism, Patrick Bixby deftly traces the circulation of the philosophers ideas in the work of major Irish writers and, more broadly, the Irish public sphere during the turbulent early decades of the twentieth century. George Bernard Shaw styled himself an English (or Irish) Nietl#1