Remembering the Year of the French: Irish Folk History and Social Memory (History of Ireland & the Irish Diaspora) - Hardcover

Guy Beiner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299218201 ISBN 13: 9780299218201

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006

Synopsis

Remembering the Year of the French is a model of historical achievement, moving deftly between the study of historical events - the failed French invasion of the West of Ireland in 1798 - and folkloric representations of those events. Delving into the folk history found in Ireland's rich oral traditions, Guy Beiner reveals alternate visions of the Irish past and brings into focus the vernacular histories, folk commemorative practices, and negotiations of memory that have gone largely unnoticed by historians. Beiner analyzes hundreds of hitherto unstudied historical, literary, and ethnographic sources. Though his focus is on 1798, his work is also a comprehensive study of Irish folk history and grass-roots social memory in Ireland. Investigating how communities in the West of Ireland remembered, well into the mid-twentieth century, an episode in the late eighteenth century, this is a ""history from below"" that gives serious attention to the perspectives of those who have been previously ignored or discounted. Beiner brilliantly captures the stories, ceremonies, and other popular traditions through which local communities narrated, remembered, and commemorated the past. Demonstrating the unique value of folklore as a historical source, ""Remembering the Year of the French"" offers a fresh perspective on collective memory and modern Irish history.

About this title

Review:

A brilliant and original contribution not only to Irish history, reconstructing the view from below, but also to the study of social memory. - Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge

About the Author:

Guy Beiner is lecturer in history at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. He has been a research fellow at Trinity College Dublin and an NEH Keough Irish Studies Fellow at Notre Dame University, and he is the author of many articles on modern Irish history and memory.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0299218201
• ISBN 13: 9780299218201
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 576