SOURCE: “The Hidden Ireland,” in Times Literary Supplement, January 26, 1996, p. 26.

In the following review, Craig discusses Kinsella's assessment of Irish literary tradition—in particular, its unities and divisions—as presented in The Dual Tradition.

“The Irish tradition is a matter of two linguistic entities in dynamic interaction”, Thomas Kinsella wrote in his introduction to the New Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1986); and The Dual Tradition takes up the theme. The point, indeed, is not new, and Kinsella himself has held fast to it for some time. Literature in Ireland is not divided but dual, and to consider either of its parts in isolation from the other is to diminish both. What the book presents is not so much an argument as a standpoint, a proposition that we’re asked to bear in mind throughout, and what it adds up to is a succinct history of poetry in Ireland...