A terrible beauty is bought: 1916, commemoration and commodification

Abstract

Mindful of Benedict Anderson’s emphasis on Imagined Communities on the power of print culture – and print-capitalism – to shape and share national ideas and identities, this article offers a comparative analysis of the commemorations of 1798 and 1916 by looking at commemorative ephemera: kitschy memorabilia, themed merchandise, newspaper cuttings and advertisements, handbills and inventively branded commodities, as important cultural texts which purveyed ideological values and meanings at the time of their production. It suggests that the consumer sphere allows us to shed light on the commemorative discourses these ephemeral objects produce, retelling and retailing the risings in question. Texts often regarded as throwaway or lowbrow vied for their share in the ideological marketplace to form part of the heritage of 1798 and 1916, the centenary of the one feeding into the ferment of the other. The reception and representation of the pivotal figures of Wolfe Tone and James Connolly is discussed through the prism of Thomas Richards’ conception of commodity culture, and attention is paid to counter-commemorative strands as well as positive rhetorics of remembrance.

Keywords:

• Commemoration
• commodity culture
• advertising
• national identity
• ephemera
• James Connolly
• Wolfe Tone

Notes

1. Edwards, “A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning,” 216.

2. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 2.

3. Longley, “The Rising,” 29.

4. Ibid., 30.

5. Coleman, “Was the State Commemoration of O’Donovan Rossa Appropriate?”

6. Yeats, “The Statues,” 172.

7. Coleman, “Was the State Commemoration of O’Donovan Rossa appropriate?”

8. Pearse, “Graveside Oration for O’Donovan Rossa”.

9. Wills, Dublin 1916, 11.

10. Pierse, “Inventing 1916,” 34.

11. Deane, Selected Plays, 13.

12. Longley, “The Rising,” 31.

13. Leerssen, “1798: The Recurrence of Violence and Two Conceptualizations of History,” 40.

14. Crossman, “The Shan Van Vocht,” 129.

15. Collins, Who Fears to Speak of ‘98, 49.

16. Ibid.

17. Ó Broin, Revolutionary Underground, 84–5.

18. Cullen, “Marketing National Sentiment,” 176.

19. Cited in Ward, Maud Gonne, 46.

20. Gonne, “The Famine Queen”.

21. Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England, 74.

22. Ibid., 74–5.

23. Andrews, “The Imperial Style”, 73.

24. Whelan, The Tree of Liberty, 172.

25. Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England, 79.

26. Cited in Collins, 16 Lives, 76–7.

27. Cited in Nevin, James Connolly, 114.

28. O’Malley, On Another Man’s Wound, 47.

29. Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 101.

30. Skinnider, Doing My Bit for Ireland, 204–5.

31. Higgins, Transforming 1916; “‘The Irish Republic was Proclaimed by Poster’”.

32. Hart, The I.R.A. and Its Enemies, 207.

33. Ibid.

34. Beiner, “Negotiations of Memory,” 65.

35. Rains, Commodity Culture and Social Class, 206–7.

36. Moran, Staging the Easter Rebellion, 1.

37. Higgins, “The Irish Republic was Proclaimed by Poster”.

38. Cited Collins, 16 Lives, 288.

39. McGreevy, “Rising from the Ashes”.

40. Strachan and Nally, Advertising, Literature and Print Culture in Ireland, 94.

41. Ibid.

42. Cited in Strachan and Nally, Advertising, Literature and Print Culture in Ireland, 98.

43. Williams, “Advertising”, 185.

44. Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England, 3.

45. Elliott, Wolfe Tone, 399.

46. Quinault, “The Cult of the Centenary”, 318.

47. Cited in Collins, 16 Lives, 268.