Consequence Forum publishes my essay on Irish Modernism, Conflict and Pádraic O Conaire

On 16 May 2025, Consequence Forum published my long-read essay “Pádraic O Conaire’s Enduring Art of Conflict Narration.” Initially on the CF website and afterwards on its website, the publication is accompanied by a magisterial narration by professional narrator Simon Barber, who lends the subject the appropriate gravitas and levity it requires.

An important if now obscure Irish-language author, O Conaire was a journalist, novelist and author of short stories. His wit, powers of observation, and preferences for chronicling the common people of the Irish countryside in a manner distinct from that projected upon them by foreign (and sometimes local) authors endeared him to his fellow Fenians; after his death there was a well-attended funeral and de Valera himself inaugurated his statue in Galway’s Eyre Square.

The story that is analyzed in my article, ‘The Bishop’s Soul,’ comes from the author’s imaginative and often comic fictionalized retelling of the 1916 Easter Rising, Seven Virtues or the Rising. At once non-heroic and deeply personal, the story chronicles a bishop who resolves a moral dilemma accidentally after being stranded on a country road, and wanders incognito into a country pub after hours. It is a remarkable story and, as my analysis shows, weaves in a number of literary allusions and details of contemporaneous historical personages to add relevance and poignancy to the narration.