Notes

Although postcolonial theory does not propose a simple causal relation between literature and political action, it nonetheless views literature as an enabler of nationalism and in turn political action: literature imagines the community of the nation, giving it a virtually mythical status. The power of the national imaginary to inspire political action is never in doubt, but the precise mechanisms by which this happens or whether indeed any kind of direct causality is involved remains unclear. It may very well be that literature and political action are reciprocating parts of a complex process for which such questions are peripheral.

An example of such reciprocation is an early play by Yeats, The King’s Threshold (1904), in which an ancient Irish poet goes on hunger strike to protest against his king. This play might be thought to have engendered the hunger strikes Irish republicans resorted to, first during the struggle with Britain from 1916 to 1920, then in the civil war that followed as they fought against the Free State government forces, and finally in 1981 as they resisted continuing British rule in Northern Ireland. Similarly in reciprocation, when the Republican mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, died in hunger strike in 1920, Yeats revised his play, and gave it a revised conclusion – a tragic ending, attributing the tragic ending as a great improvement & much more representative of the then political climate.