Thomas Macdonagh's Literary Analysis

Ezra Pound eloquently highlights the overall impact Thomas MacDonagh had on Irish literature during his short life. Pound states that MacDonagh’s ‘loss is a loss to both Ireland and to literature, and it is a loss bound to be felt as his work becomes more widely known’. He was born in 1878 in Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary to a father from Roscommon and a mother from Dublin, both school teachers. Both his family life and the influence of his parents are key to understanding the shape his life took. It is abundantly obvious that his family had a profound influence on his life and as a result, that shaped MacDonagh's literary career. The importance that both his mother and father put on education, literature, music and theatre all directly influenced …show more content…
The Gaelic League was certainly one of the most significant influences on Thomas MacDonagh’s literary career. He once described the Irish language as the nation’s soul and that the ‘Gaelic league was the precursor of a great movement, having for its object an Irish Ireland’, while the League did not make Irish the everyday language of Ireland, it generated enough enthusiasm to stop it disappearing altogether, in conjunction with his literature, MacDonagh would propose and analyse themes in his articles, poems and in his plays to impel those to join the cause for a united Ireland. For MacDonagh this was simple; an Irish-Ireland would consist of the masses speaking in the native tongue, Gaelic, embracing the great traditions of Irish culture that have been passed down before them and be a nation who would control its own destiny free from British influence. As a result, this central purpose places literature in Ireland within the cultural nationalist setting of the turn of the twentieth century. In Ireland, this manifested itself in the Literary Revival, Gaelic Athletic Association and other similar organisations all of which formed part of a growing interest in the country’s heritage and history. P.J. Matthews calls these cultural groups 'self-help initiatives, important pieces of the complex process of decolonisation’. MacDonagh was intensely influenced by this new movement. He believed that this new organisation was a social outlet for the men of Ireland and it served as a means of expressing progressive and positive patriotism. He hoped that these organisations would inspire others to listen to their ideologies and partake in the rebellion that was to follow, in doing so he was creating a sense of nationalism. He was in fact, so enthused he wrote a poem, ‘The Marching Song of the Irish Volunteers’. The language in this poem is highly