"Irishness" and the AF series
O’Sullivan, Keith, and Valerie Coghlan. Irish Children’s Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Contemporary Writing. 2011. Routledge.
The quote from O'Sullivan and Coghlan (2011) captures the tension that makes it interesting to think about Artemis's specific Irishness: "While Artemis is explicitly represented as a scion of an Irish criminal dynasty, inhabiting a modernized Norman castle, [...] all sense of the national and the local have been eradicated [from the series]. Speech rhythms are entirely mid-Atlantic. No Hiberno-English or Wexford usages are evident. Landscape has become virtual".
Artemis' Irishness may never be in question, but the nature of that Irishness is striking!
“Madam,” [Artemis] said. “I have a proposition for you.”
The figure’s head wobbled sleepily.
“Wine,” she rasped, her voice like nails on a school board. “Wine, English.”
Artemis smiled. [...]
“Irish, actually. Now, about my proposition?”
“The healer shook a bony finger craftily. “Wine first. Then talk.”
“Butler?”
The bodyguard reached into a pocket, and drew out a half pint of the finest Irish whiskey”
[Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl: Book 1]
In the first book, Artemis is mistaken by the sprite for English, right as she asks for wine. Artemis corrects her, stating that he is Irish; notably, the alcohol he offers is not the wine the sprite requested, but (the finest) Irish whiskey.
IMO this interaction is what O'Sullivan and Coghlan 2011 alludes to: Artemis Fowl is a series that asserts its Irishness... but it is also true that the prose is "mid-Atlantic" and time spent in Ireland* is usually limited to the setting of the Manor (*one should note that this should also be contextualized by the series' publication during the Celtic Tiger).
The first AF book was published in 2001, which I note here due to economic context. The "Celtic Tiger" refers to the rapid economic growth in Ireland from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s.
O’Leary, Eoin. “Reflecting on the ‘Celtic Tiger’: Before, during and After.” Irish Economic and Social History, vol. 38, 2011, pp. 73–88. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24338906. Accessed 2 Aug. 2023.
During this period of economic growth (which one must note was characterized by high technology exports), there was a boom in internationally successful Irish children's and young adult fiction. These books usually harkened back to pre-colonial mythology while incorporating high-tech themes connected to economic optimism for Ireland's future.
The 2011 essay collection edited by Keith O'Sullivan and Valerie Coghlan, Irish Children’s Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Contemporary Writing, analyzes the historical context behind these trends in youth fiction.
O’Sullivan, Keith, and Valerie Coghlan. Irish Children’s Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Contemporary Writing. 2011. Routledge.
IMO, the history of the Butlers and the Fowls provides some context for the Irishness of Artemis. “The first record of this unusual arrangement was when Virgil Butler had been contracted as servant, bodyguard, and cook to Lord Hugo de Folé for one of the first great Norman crusades"; the Fowls and Butlers arrive in Ireland as Anglo-Norman conquerors.
The first AF book is one of the entries into the series that is grounded the most in a sense of Ireland as a Space (i.e., the book highlights cultural, historic, and geographic features of Ireland to create the ambiance + setting).
This article that I read a while back on the Artemis Fowl series (Lindve 2007) looked at the emphasis on locations in Ireland across the first three books, and book one was the only text in which mentions of Ireland exceeded mentions of other locations (e.g., Haven, various cities and countries around the world, etc).
Lindve, K. (2007). A Study on the Artemis Fowl Series in the Context of Publishing Success.
The AF series exists in an interesting position in Irish children's publishing vis à vis how it relates to the context of its own publishing. In a collection of essays on political and aesthetic analyses of Irish children's literature, Celia Keenan wrote the following (you may recognize some of this from the above excerpt of O'Sullivan and Coghlan 2011):
Keenan, Celia. 2007. Eoin Colfer. In Irish Children’s Writers and Illustrators 1986–2006: A Selection of Essays, eds. Valerie Coghlan and Siobhán Parkinson, 21–28. Dublin: Children’s Books Ireland & Church of Ireland College of Education Publications
Posted Jan 26, 2025, 7:02 PM UTC