Pedagogy & Education

Foreign Tongues

Editorial: University College Dublin Press

ISBN: 9781739086312

Pub: 2024-05-05

How history shifts languages and languages in turn shape history is a deep-rooted, dynamic process manifest in Victorian Ireland. In Foreign Tongues, Phyllis Gaffney sheds new light on this period of Irish history, exploring how continental influences that predated the Penal Laws were reinvigorated in the wake of the French Revolution. An influx of foreign teachers and religious orders created institutions for an emerging élite, and University education expanded. At the same time, civil service reforms opened careers across the British Empire to graduates from all religions. The result is that Ireland’s Victorian colleges embraced language study—ancient and modern, Irish and European—more eagerly than their British counterparts.