Chapter 2 - Poetry and Restoration Ireland

Summary

‘Poetry and Restoration Ireland’ addresses one of the most fascinating but least-known aspects of the literary Restoration: the flourishing of poetry in and about Ireland. It focuses initially on the coterie surrounding Katherine Philips, who lived in Ireland from 1662 to 1663 and whose literary works – especially her play Pompey (1663) – gave rise to a small poetic industry in Restoration Dublin. It subsequently traces the later poetic activities of two key members of Philips’s circle: the earl of Orrery, whose devotional poetry represents an important intervention into Irish religious politics, and his kinsman the earl of Roscommon, whose translations, original poems, and literary relationship with John Dryden are reassessed for their political and national significance. Later sections survey responses by Irish poets to the political crises of the 1680s and 1690s, considering poems such as Luke Wadding’s A Smale Garland (a collection of Catholic devotional lyrics inspired by George Herbert), the aggressive Protestant Fingallian Burlesque (in manuscript and print recensions from the 1660s to the 1680s), and Ellis Walker’s translation of Epictetus’s stoic handbook, the Enchiridion. It also considers relationships between English and Irish literary publishing in this period.