Declan Kiberd's "Anglo-Irish Attitudes"
鍾照妍
摘要
In “Anglo-Irish Attitudes,” written in 1985 as one of the Field Day pamphlets, Declan Kiberd maintains that the notion of “Ireland” and “England” are structured for historical, political and pragmatic purposes that fulfill the expectations of people from the two countries. While Irish barbarity serves to accentuate English sophistication, the stereotypical projection on Irishmen at times helps them to easily succeed in economic and political realms. In Kiberd’s view, the “laboratory theory” can explain the complicities between the English and the Irish, in that economic and cultural interchanges for centuries do incur positive influences on the younger generations.
To question the stereotypes of Irishness and Englishness, Kiberd also exemplifies plays by Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Yeats to advance his observations on the Anglo-Irish antithesis. For Wilde, the polarization of Irish and English cultural traits arose from “Victorian determinism,” similar to how women were expected to be submissive rather than subservient. This has been vehemently satirized by Wilde in The Importance of Being Earnest. Likewise, in Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island, stereotypes upon lazy Irishmen and noble Englishmen are ridiculed and severely criticized.
By enumerating examples in drama, Kiberd illuminates the unreliability of the Irish/English dichotomy, and further points out how the “Irish Question” and the “English Question” have been closely intertwined. Kiberd then compares different attitudes in these two countries towards the Anglo-Irish, explaining how such differences are inevitably cultivated by socio-political milieus. In the end, Kiberd calls for a serious examination of Ulster Unionism, asserting that Unionist misrule would bring harm to the British administration in general and much devalue British democracy. To find a solution for the problems between Ireland and England, Kiberd maintains that a thorough examination of the Unionist culture is urgent.
