Palmer, Patricia
(1990)
Apples, Arts, Amnesiacs and Emigrants: The University Connection.
Irish Review, 8.
pp. 14-18.
ISSN 0790-7850
Abstract
On 14 September 1989, the Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey unveiled a stout
granite stone at the entrance to what had been up to then the National Institute
for Higher Education, Limerick. The front face of the stone bears the institution's new name: 'University of Limerick' and - in significantly smaller lettering - 'Ollscoil Luimnigh'. On the reverse side, however, carved into the stone
in celtic lettering, there is a curious legend:
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
The appropriation of Mr Yeats's lines as a motto, of sorts, for the erstwhile
'Technological University' seems, at first sight, a curious blend of whimsy and
incongruity: this is hardly an institution where studious youth is encouraged to
dabble in dreams, 'to walk among long dappled grass' or pluck . . . anything.
The spectacle of an institution dismissive of the place of the arts - as anything
other than quaint heraldry - invoking Yeats's benediction for its vision of
relevance and salvation-through-technology is richly ironic.
It is worth locating more precisely the exact nature of this paradox. For the opposition on which it rests - between the 'relevant', narrowly defined, and the
implicitly 'irrelevant' - conveniently marks the cordinates in a debate that
must be joined. For from this dialectic will emerge a definition of what universities are and what they do to take us into the twenty-first century...
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
Blessings; Art education; Silver; Socialism; Emigration; Abstract art; Irony; Paradoxes; Universities; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts & Humanities > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > English |
| Item ID: |
11446 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.2307/29735508 |
| Depositing User: |
Patricia Palmer
|
| Date Deposited: |
23 Oct 2019 15:27 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Irish Review |
| Publisher: |
Cork University Press |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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