In 1985 the highly acclaimed "Ascendancy and tradition " posed the question: "Why did Ireland, a small country by any standard, contribute so prolifically to the modernist movement?" Extending this original theme to include additional authors, this book revises and elaborates on a number of crucial arguments which still arouse heated debate. Beginning with correspondence and pamphlets on the bourgeois origins of Protestant Ascendency, this book places its concerns in a broad European context, culminating in WWII. -- Publisher description.