Description
Book SynopsisIn Ireland, few figures have generated more hatred than Oliver Cromwell, whose seventeenth-century conquest, massacres, and dispossessions would endure in the social memory for ages to come. The Devil from over the Sea explores the many ways in which Cromwell was remembered and sometimes conveniently ''forgotten'' in historical, religious, political, and literary texts, according to the interests of different communities across time. Cromwell''s powerful afterlife in Ireland, however, cannot be understood without also investigating his presence in folklore and the landscape, in ruins and curses. Nor can he be separated from the idea of the ''Cromwellian'': a term which came to elicit an entire chain of contemptuous associations that would begin after his invasion and assume a wholly new force in the nineteenth century. What emerges from all these memorializing traces is a multitudinous Cromwell who could be represented as brutal, comic, sympathetic, or satanic. He could be discarded al
Trade ReviewThis fascinating book explores how Oliver Cromwell has been remembered, forgotten, misremembered, demonized, and mythologized in Ireland and Irish America for more than three centuries. * D. R. Bisson, CHOICE *
Intriguing * Nicholas Canny, Irish Times *
This thoughtful, innovative work by Sarah Covington represents the latest, and by far the best, attempt to understand the extraordinary power of Cromwell's name and reputation amongst Irish people at home and abroad... this extraordinarily rich volume not only brings our understanding of Cromwell and his reputation in Ireland on to a new level, it also represents a further important contribution to the burgeoning field of Irish 85 memory studies by a historian who is at the height of her powers. Add to this the attractive pricing by OUP, and The Devil from over the Sea becomes a must-buy book. * Alan Ford, University of Nottingham, The Seventeenth Century *
This is a book that people with even a passing interest in Irish history have an obligation to acquire and to read. * Eamon Maher, Technological University Dublin *
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1: Aftermath 2: Religious Cromwell 3: Political Cromwell 4: Propertied Cromwell 5: Ruinous Cromwell 6: Folkloric Cromwell 7: Migrated Cromwell Conclusion
