This book investigates the role of literary criticism in the process of Irish decolonisation since the late eighteenth century, with special emphasis on the 1950s. Drawing on the work of both Irish and international commentators – including Edward Said, David Lloyd, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Luke Gibbons – Gerry Smyth seeks to reconfigure the established relations between literature and criticism. Smyth then sets his analysis against a modular theory of decolonisation based on a reading of Irish history from the perspective of contemporary postcolonial and post-structural theory. Engaging with debates in a number of current fields, Decolonisation and Criticism challenges many assumptions and practices of Irish literary history.