Realism tends to be regarded within early twentieth-century Irish writing primarily as a vehicle for critiques of the Revival and associated visions of the Irish nation rather than for any significant literary contributions of its own. While realist writing does offer important counterpoints to the Revival, this narrow framing has effectively flattened the complexity of Irish realism in ways that conflate realism and naturalism and oversimplify the ideological functions of perspectives typically grouped under ‘the Counter-Revival’.