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Knock: The Virgin's Apparition in Nineteenth- Century Ireland(Softback - 2009) €29.00 |
Price: €29.00
Add to BagCo-winner of the tenth annual James S. Donnelly, Sr. award for Books in History and the Social Sciences presented by the American Conference for Irish Studies (ACIS)
In 1879 local people reported an apparition of the Virgin Mary and other supernatural personages at Knock, a poor rural village in western Ireland. In contrast to devotional or dismissive accounts, the author draws on both insiders’ views and his training as a sociologist to show how the apparition was related to the local social context including economic, cultural, religious, political and historical dimensions. Drawing on new and neglected sources of evidence, Hynes pays particular attention to the individuals most directly involved including the seers, local clergy, Land League activists, various promoters, and others. The author looks through participants’ eyes as much as possible. To understand what those eyes saw, the book examines the local scene for half a century before the apparition. His deep knowledge of the local context enables the author to develop understandings of key persons and events before and around the apparition. Using the Knock case, the author challenges usually accepted explanations of changes in nineteenth-century Irish Catholicism. The book is important for those interested in the links between official and local religion especially in Irish Catholicism, for students of apparitions generally, for anyone interested in bottom-up approaches to social and cultural history, and especially for students of nineteenth-century Ireland.
Softback: 2009
Printed Pages: 388
Size: 234 x 156mm
ISBN: 9781859184639
Book Reviews
Victorian Studies, Winter 2011
June 16, 2011, 14:38 pm
essential reading for students of Irish history and culture. . . Those interested in the apparition, in popular religion in Ireland, and in religious experience in general, should begin with Knock
Irish Historical Studies, 2010
June 16, 2011, 14:38 pm
a most accessible, penetrating and enriching study. . . it is a work of the highest importance
History: Reviews of New Books, January 2011
June 16, 2011, 14:34 pm
meticulously researched, well-argued, and captivating
Carole M. Cusak, Australasian Journal of Irish Studies
June 16, 2011, 14:28 pm
Eugene Hynes’ study of the apparition of the Virgin Mary at Knock,County Mayo, in 1879 is a valuable contribution to the field of academic studies of Marian apparitions in the modern world. This is an important book that should attract a wide readership. Hynes is an academic sociologist, but he writes in a clear and generally jargon-free manner.
Rene Kollar, Journal of British Studies
June 16, 2011, 14:28 pm
This is a perceptive and well-written book that gives the readers a new insight into the Knock apparition.
Kerby Miller (University of Missouri)
June 16, 2011, 14:27 pm
is perhaps the single best book ever written about the social and cultural dynamics of rural Ireland, with enormous implications for (and multiple cross-references to) the multiple and conflicting consequences of what used to be called ' modernization' in a host of similar 'developing' societies'.
The Catholic Historical Review
June 16, 2011, 14:27 pm
Hynes’s reconstruction of nineteenth-century Knock is exemplary in its intellectual daring and the depth of evidence deployed, and his discussion of how the seers’ accounts were reshaped when recorded by clerical investigators who assumed the authenticity of the vision they were supposed to be investigating is very challenging.
James Joyce Literary Supplement
June 16, 2011, 14:26 pm
Hynes's book is certain to be one of the standard resources for nineteenth century Irish history
English Historical Review
August 9, 2010, 9:50 am
Hynes's book is recommended as a landmark study that provides an engaging and thought-provoking analysis of the major facets of the religious and social history of nineteenth-century Ireland
