Patrick Pearse, an important Irish journalist, educator, and artist, came to play the pivotal role in the Easter Rising of 1916. Here Seán Farrell Moran examines Pearse within the context of contemporary Irish politics and culture to explain how this unlikely revolutionary became the spokesman of the violent forces within the nationalist movement.
"I was excited and intrigued by the work, responses I imagine will be those of a large number of readers. They will be students of Irish history, of course, but the book will appeal, too, to followers of present-day Irish politics, to the significant number of readers of biography, and to those interested in psychohistory. . . . The significance of violent self-sacrifice in Irish cultural history is, prima facie, a topic calling for psychohistorical investigation, but Moran's scrupulous assessment of previous scholarship leads event the skeptical reader to the same conclusion."-G. J. Barker-Benfield, Associate Professor of History, State University of New York at Albany
"Moran delves into the psyche of Patrick Pearse . . . to outline a man seeking success if not in this life then in the next. Pearse was executed following the Easter Rising in Dublin, 1916, becoming the first modern Irish leader advocating physical force to die for his principles. Moran asks why Pearse, an unlikely hero, did so. . . . As a counter to nationalistic texts, Moran's study fills a niche in academic collections of modern Irish history."-Library Journal
"Lucid, engaging and well researched."-Irish Independent Weekender
"[A]n intriguing character study of Patrick Pearse . . ."-Tom Garvin, Irish Political Studies
"Pearse has been the subject of several biographies, but this is the first to apply the insights of psychoanalysis to either Pearse or . . . any of the other significant figures of 20th-century Irish history. Moran seems well suited to this task."-The Psychohistory Review
Sean Farrel Moran is associate professor of history at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan.
