ABSTRACT
What role does myth play in Irish nationalism? More particularly, how does the mythology of sovereignty relate to the discourses of martyrdom and motherland which have informed Irish republican ideology? In Chapter 4 I talked of the need to explore the cultural and political imaginary of Irish society. In what follows I propose to interrogate the roots of this imaginary in two modes of discourse: (i) the prison discourse of martyrdom, and (ii) the poetic discourse of motherland. The interrogation will disclose a common myth of sacrifice underlying both.
