ADVANCE NOTICE OF ESSAY in SEVEN DAYS / SUNDAY NATIONAL, 15 June 2025
James Joyce’s ‘Ivy Day’ and Our National Narrative
Andrew Murray Scott takes advice from the famous Irish writer on how to create our texts of national liberation.
In 1921 on the eve of publication of Ulysses, James Joyce declared that ‘all great writers were national first and it was the intensity of their nationalism that made them international in the end.’
The text of Ulysses redefined Irish national identity and is the text of Ireland’s national liberation, pre-occupied with, even obsessed with, Irishness, the problems of raising national consciousness and the forging of a better Ireland. Ulysses was always meant to have a political as well as cultural impact.
We in Scotland urgently need to frame our national narrative in the context of our long march towards sovereignty. We need to redefine our national identity in this much more diverse twenty-first century and bring a new perspective of cultural change to the journey. [CONTINUES…]
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