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Article: Language, monuments, and the politics of memory in Quebec and Ireland.
- Article from:
- Eire-Ireland: a Journal of Irish Studies
- Article date:
- March 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Irish American Cultural Institute. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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CONTEMPORARY Ireland and Quebec each have centuries of complex language traditions in which Irish, English, and French have jostled in different ways at different periods of time. This article examines two sites--the 1909 Celtic cross at Grosse Ile, Quebec, and the 1903 Miss Erin monument at Kilrush, County Clare--to highlight ways in which texts at those sites were attempts to fix collective memory, but over the twentieth century have become a kind of fragmented conversation about language, famine, nationalism, and identity. At each site, stone structures soar over eye-level text panels that seem to display one single message in Irish, French, and English. Two of the ...