In her essay ëTom Paulin: Enlightening the Tribeí (1993), Clair
Wills understands Paulinís poetry as ëdedicated to a post-colonial and
post-imperial outlookí with a ëdesire to ìdeconstructî the notion of
Englishnessí.^6 Even so, Paulinís poetry finds it difficult to ëspeak
plainly for a new civilityí and the effects of Walking a Line are far
from straightforward.^7 Wills has persuasively brought attention to how
a postmodern artistic agenda which attacks foundational thought may
seem different from Paulinís professed Enlightened republican ideal.
She argues that Paulin writes within the limits of the Enlightenment
values that he finds himself forced to critique.
In his essays, Paulin has with unprecedented optimism drawn on
Enlightenment republicanism which is explained by Isaiah Berlin in
terms of an ideal secular republic: wholly just, wholly virtuous, the
wholly satisfied society that is imagined by the cultured and educated
men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.^8 Paulin writes: ëIn
my view it is impossible to achieve a wide and cultivated cosmo-
politan outlook without beginning ñ like a diver kicking off from a
springboard ñ from the idea of a secular republic.í^9 Regarding this
comment, Willsís conclusion that Paulin is not a postmodern poet due
to his entrenchment in the critical insights and foundational
philosophies of the European Enlightenment does not initially seem to
be illogical. She writes: ëthe general description of Paulinís style as
ìpostmodernî does not acknowledge the political dimension of his
attempt to formulate a poetics in opposition to the post-Romantic
aesthetics of privacy, which Paulin sees as linked to a conservative
politics.í^10 Here, Wills outlines how Paulinís political vision derives
from the classical and secular ideals of the eighteenth century, and
indicates his impatience with a conservative strain in English politics
and literature which pays attention to ëprivateí as opposed to ëpublicí
realms. But as Paulin draws on Paul Klee, there is no easy line to be
6 Clair Wills, ëTom Paulin: Enlightening the Tribeí, Improprieties: Politics and
Sexuality in Northern Irish Poetry (Oxford: University Press, 1993), p.122.
7 Ibid., p.22.
8 Ibid., pp.121ñ57. Cf. Isaiah Berlin, The Eighteenth Century Philosophers: The
Age of Enlightenment (New York: Mentor, 1956, 1962), p.28.
9 Paulin, ëIntroductioní, Ireland and the English Crisis (Newcastle: Bloodaxe,
1994), pp.17ñ18.
10 Wills, Improprieties, p.124.