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Since the Chinese production includes so much sexual display, we have to wonder whether it might not be deliberately, or even unconsciously, a Chinese Playboy version of Synge’s “Western World”. At the very least, we must wonder to what extent the accumulation of sexually charged allusions affects an interpretation of the performance? To answer this, we need to consider changes of expectation within contemporary Chinese culture, the earlier norms of representation within the People’s Republic and the nature of the imaginative world in Chinese society today.

The Irish Literary Revival, alongside many other similar movements of the time, was an attempt to transform Ireland from what it seemed to be becoming – a derivative, provincial British backwater given to exaggerated bluster about its Irishness – into an autonomous and self-respecting cultural centre. This is the logic behind Douglas Hyde’s “On the Necessity of De-Anglicising Ireland”. Quinn shows no interest in or understanding of this aspect of the Revival – it would, after all, involve getting to grips with the dynamics of Anglo-Irish cultural relations, with due attention to both sides of the hyphen.

Actually these norms turn out not to be so unique – they are all but identical to the public school ethos as Orwell describes it. Thus sport can, at the very least, be seen as encouraging and condoning behaviour that would normally be considered unacceptable or even criminal. PG Wodehouse’s description of a rugby match exaggerates, but not by much: “each side is allowed to … do things to its fellow-man which, if done elsewhere, would result in fourteen days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench”.

The title of this poem, “City”, also calls to mind Roy Fisher’s 1961 collection of the same name and Fisher as a poet of the city – “Birmingham’s what I think with” as he famously remarked – is an important figure for Wheatley. Indeed his definition of a poem may be Wheatley’s own: “A poem has business to exist, really, if there’s a reasonable chance that somebody may have his perceptions rearranged by having read it.”

On Thursday June 11th, 1992 I spoke at a public meeting in Bray, Co Wicklow as part of the Maastricht Treaty referendum campaign. With...

Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006, by Paul Bew, Oxford University Press, 652 pp, £35, ISBN: 978-0198205555 Paul Bew is an extremely intelligent, widely read,...

His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey, Faber & Faber, 272pp, £16.99, ISBN: 978-0571231515 Peter Carey is lost in the jungle. It’s not the concrete jungle...

Books drawn on in this essay include: The Plot Against Samuel Pepys, by James and Ben Long, Faber and Faber, 322 pp, £17.99, ISBN: 978-0571227136 The...

The Highland Clearances: The People, Landlords and Rural Turmoil, by Eric Richards, Birlin, Edinburgh, 377 pp, £9.99, ISBN: 978-1841580401. Clearances and Improvement: Land, Power and...

Absent Minds: Intellectuals in Britain, by Stefan Collini, Oxford University Press, 544 pp, £16.99, ISBN: 978-0199216659 Culture is always something that was Something pedants can measure, Skull...