... question whether the definite reality of the situation is all-important, or if it is only a version of the truth that we really want to hear. Terence Brown terms the years 1959-79, the 'Decades of Debate.' During this period a new approach to the historiography of Ireland emerged with Conor Cruise O'Brien as one of the main advocators. O'Brien wanted to introduce what he described as, sharp doses of realism necessary to cure the chronic low level fantasy induced by nationalist ideology.2 O'Brien wanted to destroy the myth that the 'Irish nation' was predestined from the Easter Rising of 1916. From the proclamation of the Irish republic by Pearse, one can see the romanticism surrounding the nationalist ideal of the Irish State.3 O'Brien set out to create a new representation of Irish history, which would distinguish between 'history proper' and the 'essentially 'literary current in Irish history.''4 He viewed the relationship that had ...

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