This thesis considers the ways in which advanced nationalist identity was communicated to the broader Irish populace in Dublin from 1890 to 1917. It contends that the performance and communication of advanced nationalist identity is best understood within the context of fin-de-siècle Dublin. During this period the streets formed spaces in which identities, both political and otherwise, were performed and through reciprocal spectatorship were also negotiated and mediated. The public funerals of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa in 1915 and Thomas Ashe in 1917 are the subject of close scrutiny. Through analysing the performance of these funerals, this thesis shows how the relationship between the physical space of the city and the body was integral to the performance of advanced nationalist identity. The Easter Rising is presented as a moment of rupture between these two funerals, during which the rebels failed to communicate effectively with their audience. This thesis further argues that in the immediate aftermath of the Rising, material culture in the form of relics and massLproduced ephemera played a vital role in shaping and communicating a narrative of the Rising to make it intelligible to the Irish populace. The successful construction of an interpretive framework meant that, by the time the rebels returned from their various places of internment, public understanding of and identification with both the Rising and advanced nationalist identity more broadly, had dramatically increased.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:582321 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Elliott, Jack |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/57057/ |
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