Word: gaelicism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...style is a blend of Gaelic eloquence, Harvard donnishness and American stump evangelism. In front of a microphone or over a dinner table, he can draw on a broad mental library of recondite words, literary and historical allusions and outlandish bits of jargon to taunt, flatter or flay adversaries. He has stormed the rostrum to denounce the General Assembly as "a theater of the absurd" and to dismiss reports on American imperialism as "rubbish." When something clear and pleasing emerges from U.N. newspeak, he quotes James Joyce to describe the rare phenomenon: "Its whatness leaps to us from the vestment...
Scotland's armed resistance to her union with England ended in 1746, when the kilted army of Bonnie Prince Charlie was crushed at the Battle of Culloden. But Scottish nationalist yearnings never quite died away, and in the past five years the ancient Gaelic quest for independence has become a political force to reckon with. Founded in 1934, the once minuscule Scottish Nationalist Party gained 31% of the vote and eleven seats in Parliament at the 1974 elections, largely on the basis of a platform calling for more autonomy for Scotland and, eventually, full independence...
Clarke's poetry was the first to present faithfully in English the traditions of Irish Folklore and the intensity of Gaelic verse forms. Before him, Yeats and James Stephens--and even earlier in the 19th century, James Clarence Mangan and Samuel Ferguson--had attempted to revive in literature the traditions that had so long been suppressed during the English occupation. But while these earlier poets--Yeats especially--had helped create a profoundly nationalistic poetry for Irish writers, Clarke was the first to complete the task: he brought ancient Irish mythological themes to life in the same exciting way Robert Fitzgerald...
...book is crammed with old-chestnut anecdotes, pub gossip "laced with the in toxicating ingredient of malice," and sharp observations. Most of these, also inevitably, take a dying fall: the slipshod car-assembly center in Cork that turns out "lemons (or limes)"; those ash trays proudly bearing the Gaelic legend, Deanta sa tSeapain (Made in Japan...
...slain by his comrades as a suspected informer. With these mundane materials, O'Casey unleashes a torrent of engulfing emotions. The actors are up to the challenge. Though he sometimes seems about as Irish as chopped chicken liver and onion on rye, Matthau is full of baleful Gaelic braggadocio as Captain Boyle. As Joxer, Lemmon is as spry and cunning as a soiled city sparrow, and for once, Maureen Stapleton acts from her heart rather than her frazzled nerve ends. Let loud praise for all be heard, for it is much merited...