‘Dead faces laugh’: Medievalist hungers and Irish republican time, 1917-1981

Abstract

AbstractThe article analyses the temporal entanglements of personal and historical time through hunger-striking protests in Ireland and their commemoration in medieval imagery, reflecting on the role of medievalism and temporality in nation-building by insurgent agents. Between 1917 and 1981, twenty-two Irish republican paramilitary prisoners undertook hunger strikes to the death for recognition of political status and protest against their prison regimes. While some of these deaths went unremarked by the wider public because of state censorship and lack of support, others catalysed worldwide attention, and succeeded in pitching a compelling national and political narrative for their supporters. The article focuses on how the use of medievalism in examining and commemorating these deaths highlights the vivid temporal collapse between the present of the individual and the past of the nation, and the way this can appeal to the protest’s audience, while making a powerful political bid for the legitimacy of the insurgents’ national narrative. The article examines temporal entanglement both as practiced by the audience of the hunger strikes, from poets such as W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney to journalists and scholars, and by the republican community itself, whether by hunger strike survivors, their comrades, or their families, bringing together literary, material, and art historical evidence to show its relevance and pervasiveness. By doing so, the article achieves a study of the ways medievalist temporalities interact with political and personal history, in a bid for the ownership and definition of the nation.