Transitions in Irishness: Conor Mcpherson’S the Weir and Shining City

Abstract

For the Irish, the Celtic Tiger period from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s was very influential in terms of the redefinition of the Irish identity which was already affected by the changing social, economic and political circumstances since the early twentieth century because the 1990s brought a new perspective to the sense of Irishness in Irish society. As a result of the nationalist and isolationist policy, the Irish identity was constructed as rural, agricultural and Catholic in the early twentieth century. However, later on traditional Irishness was challenged by the collision of traditional and modern values in the 1960s when Eamonn de Valera’s(1882-1995) isolationist policy was abandoned. Modernisation and urbanisation began to accelerate in the Irish society, reaching their peak in the 1990s. During this period, the Irish started to focus on personal narratives more in order to explore various issues and problems in relation to family, sexuality, and religion.