Standish O'Grady, W.B. Yeats and AE

Standish O'Grady was a major figure of the Irish Literary Revival. This work situates his literary, historical and political writing in its European intellectual context and considers the far-reaching implications of his work for intellectual activity in contemporary Ireland. Michael McAteer argues that attempts to read O'Grady as either unionist or nationalist overlook the essentially contradictory nature of his writing. O'Grady internalized yet looked beyond the divisions that continue to structure intellectual debate in Ireland at present, whether in terms of history against literature, fact against theory or revisionism against post-colonialism. In addition, O'Grady’s work influenced the manner in which W.B. Yeats understood history in his early work, particularly The Wanderings of Oisin . McAteer recognizes in O'Grady a body of literature that is directly relevant to any contemporary understanding of modernity, and that suggests a way of examining long-standing divisions in Ireland without contributing to their perpetuation.