"When James Joyce sent Stephen Dedalus out of Ireland armed only with 'silence, exile and cunning', he was tapping into an elemental constituent of the Irish psyche. Joyce and Stephen left at the beginning of the century - and they were accompanied by hundreds of thousands of others, most of whom imagined themselves as exiles." "In the nineteenth century, particularly in the post-Famine years, millions left Ireland and they were preceded by vast numbers in previous centuries. The leaving of Ireland - see as 'exile', is as Irish as the shamrock and the shillelagh. For the writer, the experience was virtually obligatory, yet in spite of the scale of emigration, the size of the Irish Diaspora and the fact that almost every Irish writer of note left Ireland permanently or temporarily, the subject has been ignored by most literary commentators." "Exile, Emigration and Irish Writing is the first book to analyse the experience of exile and emigration in Irish writing. It traces the origin of the concept of exile from Columcille and early Christian Ireland through the centuries to the present. In tracing the origins, mutations and representations of exile and emigration, the author draws on modern post-colonial theory to contribute to the re-reading of Irish writing that is now under way."--Jacket.