Patrick Kavanagh and the New Myth of the Irish Peasant in the Great Hunger

Abstract

This article claims that Patrick Kavanagh sets the peasant free from the traditional romantic myth of the Revivalists that mythologizes the peasant, his existence, and his surroundings. The romantic myth of the peasant celebrates the peasant as a figure who embodies the pure Irish national identity and culture. Kavanagh is not destroying the Revivalist myth of rural Irish idyll but he is presenting another side of the rural Irish life. He believes in the sustaining power of the peasant myth but he is exposing its limitations. Kavanagh focuses on the mundane, bleak and difficult aspects of the peasant life. Kavanagh’s acknowledgement of the significance and importance of the local and the mundane is his best poetic legacy in The Great Hunger (1942). Similarly, the poet underlines the intellectual, sexual and emotional poverty of the Irish peasant that signals a significant shift from the revivalist’s idyllic portrayal of rural Ireland. Kavanagh articulates a new voice of realism. The Great Hunger induces a change in poetry motivated by Kavanagh’s belief in the local and the articulation of the unheard voice. The poem is the first critique of the Irish peasantry lifestyle as it undermines the cozy images of rural contentment advocated by both the church and the state.