Patrick Pearse and the politics of redemption: The mind of the Easter Rising, 1916

Previous historical analysis of Patrick Pearse and his participation in Dublin's Easter Rising of 1916 has failed to explain how it was that Pearse came to have such an unlikely role. This dissertation considers Pearse's life psychoanalytically within the context of contemporary Irish nationalism to explain how he became the spokesman for the most violent forces within the nationalist movement. An examination of Pearse's psychological development, his speeches, poetry, and political writings and his careers as an important Irish journalist, educator, and artist, reveals that he was unprepared for adulthood. He sought to resolve this crisis in some type of resolute act that would redeem himself as a person. In the search for psychological resolution Pearse spoke to his culture and time. His personal quest coincided with the failure of the Gaelic Revival, constitutional politics, and the Irish Republican tradition to bring forth Ireland's independence from Great Britain and her culture. Failure to realize independence led many Irish nationalists to embrace a theology of violence through which self-immolation, violence, and defeat could be justified. It was Pearse's identification and articulation of that theology in mythic terms which mobilized republicans into a doomed insurrection that promised eternal victory over the enemy. Pearse's achievement has had a lasting impact on the course of subsequent Irish politics. Pearse has been enshrined as an Irish patriot and his theological legacy has continued to provide both motivation and justification to generations of members of the Irish Republican Army. His contribution to that history should not, however, eclipse the fact that Pearse brought to Irish politics concerns which were not limited to Ireland. Patrick Pearse was not a parochial enigma: like many of his generation, he was deeply concerned that the modern age's culture of reason as represented by Britain was a threat to Irish values and culture. By embracing the subjectivity of myth over the dictates of reason and pragmatism, Pearse came to articulate the Irish rejection of modernity at a critical moment in European history.