Foreign Tongues: Victorian Language Learning and the Shaping of Modern Ireland

How history shifts languages and languages in turn shape history is a deep-rooted, dynamic process manifest in Victorian Ireland. In Foreign Tongues, Phyllis Gaffney sheds new light on this period of Irish history, exploring how continental influences that predated the Penal Laws were reinvigorated in the wake of the French Revolution. An influx of foreign teachers and religious orders created institutions for an emerging élite, and University education expanded. At the same time, civil service reforms opened careers across the British Empire to graduates from all religions. The result is that Ireland's Victorian colleges embraced language study--ancient and modern, Irish and European--more eagerly than their British counterparts.

An adaptive, fast-changing academic landscape laid the groundwork for today's Ireland--culturally confident, open to Europe and the world--while the dramatic rise of the Gaelic League forged a bond between language, education, and politics with pervasive effects on Irish identities in the twentieth century. None of that was plain sailing. Gaffney's profiles of individual professors reveal pioneering scholarship, precarious careers, sudden scandals, and denunciations and dismissals linked to local conflicts and foreign wars. On the positive side, the advance of women's education cleared the path for a cohort of notable female professors across modern languages.

This wide-ranging, detailed study draws on multiple sources to cast a fresh light on aspects of Irish history, viewed through the complex lens of language education.