characters in the pub scenes from James Joyceís Ulysses (1922). The
speakerís reliance upon typical phrases that have been heard before is
as a hackneyed as the image of Cathleen that is being criticized. In this
way, the grudging tone of the speaker is parodied as much as the
figure of Cathleen. By the end of the poem where Cathleen is referred
to as ëOld Gummy Grannyí, the choice of phrasing is Joycean and
comic in its depiction of Cathleen but it also hints at the childish
nature of a poetic speaker who resorts to the playground tactics of
calling her names.
In ëMaking Strange to See Afresh: Re-visionary Techniques in
Some Contemporary Irish Poetryí (1990), Toni OíBrien Johnson con-
cludes that assured no pre-colonial cultural essence can be recovered,
NÌ Dhomhnaill and OíLoughlin rewrite the Cuchulainn myth in
irreverent ways whereby he is not an ancient heroic model but a figure
of fun.^17 NÌ Dhomhnaillís transgression of accepted forms of the Irish
language and myth has the effect of overturning a museum culture of
nationalism that fossilized the past. NÌ Dhomhnaillís new nationalism
reinvents traditional stories and, in so doing, she reinscribes the basis
of an Irish national culture whilst challenging colonial interruption of
an earlier Irish past. Her ëC ̇ Chulainní sequence goes back in time to
bring the past forward to the present day of single mothers going to
the pub with the effect that an older more sacred world collides with
the contemporary and secular world.^18 NÌ Dhomhnaill and OíLoughlin
question the relevance of authentic modes of cultural expression
within contemporary Ireland and ironically revise them. By alluding to
the inauthenticity of the traditional tropes of ëWomaní and ëNationí
they construct what Colin Graham identifies as ëa possible alternative
formation of the authentic in Irish cultureí ëto posit a revised, ironic
authenticity as a replacementí.^19
Inauthentic Identities
17 Toni O’Brien Johnson, ‘Making Strange to See Afresh: Re-visionary
Techniques in Some Contemporary Irish Poetry’, Spell Swiss Papers in English
Language and Literature 5 On Strangeness, ed., Margaret Bridges (Tübingen:
Narr, 1990), p.143.
18 Cf. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History,
trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: University Press, 2nd edition, 1974).
19 Graham, ‘Ireland and the Persistence of Authenticity’, p.22.