Celtic Revival

1. Also known as the Irish Literary Renaissance.

2. Period from 1880 to 1939

3. To create a distinctively national literature by going back to Irish history, legend, and folklore, as well as to native literary models.

4. The major writers, however, wrote not in the native Irish (one of the Celtic languages) but in English, and under the influence of various non-Irish literary forms

5. A number of them also turned increasingly for their subject matter to modern Irish life rather than to the ancient past.

6. Notable poets in addition to Yeats were AE (George Russell) and Oliver St. John Gogarty.

7. The dramatists included Yeats himself, as well as Lady Gregory (who was also an important patron and publicist for the movement), John Millington Synge, and later Sean O'Casey.

8. Among the novelists were George Moore and James Stephens, as well as James Joyce, who, although he abandoned Ireland for Europe and ridiculed the excesses of the nationalist writers, adverted to Irish subject matter and characters in all his writings.