‘Bygone canon, bygone spleen’: Richard Murphy as a conflict poet in The Battle of Aughrim.

Campbell, Siobhan (2019). ‘Bygone canon, bygone spleen’: Richard Murphy as a conflict poet in The Battle of Aughrim. In: Keatinge, Benjamin ed. Making Integral: Critical essays on Richard Murphy. Cork, ROI: Cork University Press, pp. 111–126.

Abstract

Richard Murphy gives us a way toward making a reading of his long poem 'The Battle of Aughrim, 1691' with his riposte to aspects of Donald Davie's review of High Island: New and Selected Poems, a book in which this long poem appears. He objects to Davie's assumption that all his forebears, and by implication, he, ' "would have been on the other, the winning side" (i.e., the English Protestant side),' adding: I suggest that the division of Ireland is not just in our country, but in every Irishman's blood; and has to be resolved individually, before the conflict can be settled as a whole. One should not falsify the ancient and current Irish equation with passionate simplicities, but try to clarify by defusing some of the explosive credal myths. Ultimately our divisive legends, some of which I explore in the long poem, turn out, … to be grounded in error and ignorance. 'The Battle of Aughrim, 1691' does indeed, as Murphy reminds Davie, state that 'our ancestors fought "in opposite camps" at the behest of "absent kings." ' Murphy seems to suggest that it behoves a reader willing to go beyond the 'passionate simplicities' to make an interpretation of the work which eschews exactly what Davie continues to do in his reply to Murphy's objections. This close reading of 'The Battle of Aughrim' attempts to follow Murphy's lead in addressing the text's actual reach and ambition. While Davie resorts to the kind of literary criticism of birth, of upbringing and therefore of expected affiliation with which we are all too familiar in Irish letters, this chapter asks readers to be vigilant. Otherwise, the point of the poem may be missed; Murphy may appear to be described, but not his inclusivity of thought, nor his ambition for the work, and certainly not his ambition for an encounter with an adequate reader.

Plain Language Summary

In this chapter, Richard Murphy's long poem 'The Battle of Aughrim' is given a new set of interpretations which, it is argued, are closer to the author's intention and ambition for the work which problematises the 'Irish question' throughout.

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