After the Apocalypse: the Poetics of Irish Language Preservation

Abstract

This article examines a number of Irishlanguage tropes operating in three literary texts: Brian Friel’s play Translations, first performed in 1980; Nuala Ní Dhomnaill’s poetry collection, Northern Lights (2018); and the poet Doireann Ní Gríofa’s bilingual Lies (2018). The title of this article derives from the association between these tropes of linguistic loss, and apocalyptic imagery – an association bolstered by an on-going debate on the viability of the language in contemporary Ireland.