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12 | Peter Dolmänyos
in various traditions from the dinnseanchas to contemporary engagement
with issues of spatial considerations. Although that relation has shown sig¬
nificant synchronic variety as well as diachronic change, its relevance as a
fundamental motif has persisted despite shifting economic, social and cul¬
tural scenarios.
This prevalence of place in Irish poetry is part of a broader cultural agenda.
Neal Alexander outlines this phenomenon in a neat summary: “[clonceptions
of space and place receive a notably complex series of inflection in the Irish
context: whether in terms of Ireland’s history of conquest and colonial sub¬
jugation; its longstanding emigrant diaspora and newer immigrant popula¬
tions; the legacy of partition and competing territorial claims over the North;
or the discontinuous but far-reaching globalisation of Irish society since the
Republic of Ireland and Britain’s entry into the European Economic Commu¬
nity in 1973.”° His concern is principally the question of identity, a likewise
heavily involved concept in relation to Ireland, with a more specific glance at
Northern Ireland where the question is more saliently entangled with that of
place. He also refers to Scott Brewster’s observation on the spatial concerns
of the particular historical context of Ireland,® with even more intricate re¬
lations when Northern Ireland is concerned, which has led to an increasing
involvement of geography and elements of spatial theory in the examination
of Irish culture and literature. Gerry Smyth explicitly formulates the impor¬
tance of geography for historical enquiry in the Irish context in spite of its
rather unusual approach as “such a methodological emphasis is curious in so
far as the primary theme of Irish (cultural, political and social) history would
appear to be not historical but geographical - specifically, the presence and
function of a ‘special relationship” between people and place”? In the wake of
the work of Edward Soja and others for an elaboration on this approach, he
calls attention to the fact that romantic nationalism would incorporate this
idea from the outset, advancing the notion of a profound and essential link
between culture and place’, all the more discernible with island people accord¬
ing to Benedict Kiely.° Alexander points out the specific nature of this relation
in Northern Ireland as “the conflicting but also oddly congruent geopolitical
discourses of Nationalism and Unionism both posit a series of mythologised
identifications whereby land and community, people and place are understood
as mutually self-affirming entities."
The emergence of geography and spatial theory to a significantly more
prominent position and of constructive power in cultural discourse against
and on the expense of the prowess of temporality and consequent historicism
5 Neal Alexander, Ciaran Carson. Space, Place, Writing (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010),
13-14
Scott Brewster, “Introduction” in: Scott Brewster, Virginia Crossman, Fiona Becket and David
Alderson (eds.) Ireland in Proximity: History, Gender, Space (London: Routledge, 1999), 125
Gerry Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 20
cf. Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination, 20
Kiely quoted in Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination, 21
Alexander, Ciaran Carson. Space, Place, Writing, 15