Irish literature exists in two languages. A dual approach is necessary
if the tradition, with its historical, political and semantic tensions,
is to be understood-indeed, if some of its features are to be
appreciated at all.
Separate Gaelic and Anglo-Irish anthologies and commentaries have long
been readily available, but commentaries dealing with the total Irish
literary response are rare. In The Dual Tradition Thomas Kinsella
presents a view of poetry in Ireland from early times to the present
day, concentrating on the periods of most radical adjustment and change:
the coming of Christianity; Norman and later settlement; the end of the
bardic period; colonialism and dispossession; politics before Famine and
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries centuries. He brings Yeats and
Joyce into new focus and considers in special detail the poetry of
Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh and Samuel Beckett. The translations
from the Irish are by the author.