In chapter one, Brian Ó Conchubhair offers an examination of the metadiscourse “Revival” as a concept and the relation between revivalism and periodization. Narratives of revival too often repeat inaccurate narratives of Irish culture, to the point that our understanding of the Irish past, of Irish institutions and landscapes, suffers from unexamined conclusions about the Revival’s social and political efficacy and from images and tropes of Irishness that modern critics inherited from early revivalists. This is particularly apparent in the conception, promoted by some early revivalists, of the West of Ireland as a site of authentic Irishness. Indeed, in the Gaeltachtaí (Irish speaking regions), which have long been idealized as a stronghold of original or pure Irishness, a kind of zombification has taken place, one that in some ways displaces the long tradition of antiquarian and archaeological projects of cultural renewal and restoration.