Taking as its starting point Rorty’s marked turn to the literary, this chapter focuses particularly on the philosopher’s key concept of “redemption.” A fascinating yet significantly undertheorized aspect of his late work, redemption for Rorty carries spiritual as well as secular significance. It relates to the power of the literary imagination and becomes increasingly important in his consideration of solidarity and social justice. We will explore the development of this concept in Rorty’s oeuvre with particular reference to John Boyne’s 2017 novel, The Heart’s Invisible Furies. Uniting the work of Rorty and Boyne, we will argue, is a critique of standard religious practice and an affirmation of the human as ultimately redemptive.

The collapse of the authority, credibility, and influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland, a process that had begun in the 1960s and 1970s and was given added momentum by the revelation of child abuse and institutional scandals in the 1990s, continued unabated in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In tandem, while Ireland remained a country with a high degree of religious practice by international standards, many Irish Catholics decided to become Catholics on their own terms and Irish society became increasingly secularised, as was made clear when Ireland became the first country in the world to approve gay marriage through a referendum vote in 2015, while abortion was legalised following a referendum in 2018. This chapter explores how a range of Irish writers navigated and explored these themes, in poems, novels, and plays and considers the searching questions they asked about the weight of complex history underpinning the changes and their own role in characterising a society whose faith and religiosity were in transition.