When History Is About Feelings
In Frank Delaney’s Ireland, he takes the reader through the vivid tale of Irish history from a variety of perspectives. He applies emotion in his writing to criticize how history is taught today. Most scholars would agree with Ronan O’Mara’s professor, T. Barlett Ryle, when he argues, “History is not about feelings. History is about knowledge” (Delaney 342). However, it is taught from an objective point of view that causes it to be devalued, misunderstood, and seemingly inapplicable to the present. As a thinking and feeling species, we understand information best when we relate to it. Delaney shows how emotion acts as a vehicle to connect us to history by humanizing historical figures and/or tailoring the …show more content…
In Ireland, they were implemented to punish Irish Catholics by restricting their civil rights. The laws took away the right to own property; the right to practice law or medicine; the right to vote; the right to bear arms; as well as the right to education. The laws even prohibited Catholics from speaking the Irish language. Delaney uses Ronan to tell the story of the Penal Laws through his history paper. Ronan provides an objective point-of-view as well as a subjective point-of-view. The subjectivity is demonstrated through made-up examples of how the Penal Laws impacted the Irish Catholics which allows the reader to empathize with them. For example, Ronan created a scenario to illustrate how the Penal Laws enabled a protestant to usurp a Catholic’s home and property: It was not unusual for a Catholic man to find a stranger knocking on his door…
The stranger on the doorstep would ask to see the man of the house. ‘Are you called Thomas MacMurrough?... You have to leave this house now, for I own it...I have a piece of paper here, signed by the lord lieutenant of the county Monaghan, and it says that this place has now become my house and land.’
‘This house and land has been in my family for
In Frank Delaney’s Ireland, he takes the reader through the vivid tale of Irish history from a variety of perspectives. He applies emotion in his writing to criticize how history is taught today. Most scholars would agree with Ronan O’Mara’s professor, T. Barlett Ryle, when he argues, “History is not about feelings. History is about knowledge” (Delaney 342). However, it is taught from an objective point of view that causes it to be devalued, misunderstood, and seemingly inapplicable to the present. As a thinking and feeling species, we understand information best when we relate to it. Delaney shows how emotion acts as a vehicle to connect us to history by humanizing historical figures and/or tailoring the …show more content…
In Ireland, they were implemented to punish Irish Catholics by restricting their civil rights. The laws took away the right to own property; the right to practice law or medicine; the right to vote; the right to bear arms; as well as the right to education. The laws even prohibited Catholics from speaking the Irish language. Delaney uses Ronan to tell the story of the Penal Laws through his history paper. Ronan provides an objective point-of-view as well as a subjective point-of-view. The subjectivity is demonstrated through made-up examples of how the Penal Laws impacted the Irish Catholics which allows the reader to empathize with them. For example, Ronan created a scenario to illustrate how the Penal Laws enabled a protestant to usurp a Catholic’s home and property: It was not unusual for a Catholic man to find a stranger knocking on his door…
The stranger on the doorstep would ask to see the man of the house. ‘Are you called Thomas MacMurrough?... You have to leave this house now, for I own it...I have a piece of paper here, signed by the lord lieutenant of the county Monaghan, and it says that this place has now become my house and land.’
‘This house and land has been in my family for