LIT 4184 Spring 2022 Gontarksi

The Irish writer, Samuel Beckett (whose film we will study), liked to tell the story in which the nations of the world are asked to write an essay on “The Camel.” The Frenchman’s was called “The Camel and Love”; the German’s was “The Camel and Metaphysics”: the Irishman’s “The Camel and the fight for Irish Freedom.” Such then is the nature of the Irish ethos and sensibility, the Irish preoccupation if not obsession for some 700 years. But what happened once that independence was attained? What kind of nation did the Irish make themselves into once they were free of British oversight and regulation? We examine such issues on the 100th anniversary of Irish independence (of sorts) in 1922.

We need to keep in mind as well that Ireland is still, after more than 100 years of independence, a work in progress, a nation still trying to define what it means to be Irish. Are the Irish those that live within the borders of what is now considered Ireland. Does one need to have been born within those bounds to be considered Irish? Is there a religious test to Irishness? And what of the six counties that were part of historic Ireland but are still under British rule, the territory called Northern Ireland. Or what of the Irish diaspora, the scattering of the Irish all across the world at least since the mid nineteenth century famine. Are they Irish, or hyphenated Irish: Australian-Irish, Canadian, Irish, Irish-American. In what order should the compound be stated? These are some of the issues we will try to grapple with this term through the explorations of Irish filmmakers.