UCD Scholarcast – Series 1: The Art of Popular Culture: From “The Meeting of the Waters” to Riverdance

The aim of this series is to offer insights into key moments in the story of Irish popular culture since the publication of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies in the early nineteenth century. If the story of transnational Irish popular culture begins with Thomas Moore in the early nineteenth century, it wasn’t until the end of the 1800s that writers and intellectuals began to theorize the impact of mass cultural production on the Irish psyche during the industrial century. In 1892 Douglas Hyde, sounding the keynote of the Irish Revival, wrote that: ‘the present art products of one of the quickest, most sensitive, and most artistic races on earth are now only distinguished for their hideousness’. In the course of his influential essay, ‘The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland’, he built up a narrative of Irish cultural degeneration brought on by the un-thinking absorption of what he perceived to be vulgar British pop culture. Series Editor: PJ Mathews. Scholarcast theme music by: Padhraic Egan, Michael Hussey and Sharon Hussey. Development: John Matthews, Brian Kelly, Vincent Hoban, Niall Watts, UCD IT Services, Media Services. Consultant Producer: Cliodhna Ni Anluain, RTE