Catherine Gallagher
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182436
- eISBN:
- 9780191673801
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182436.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter discusses the productive fictions of Maria Edgeworth. These works show Edgeworth's desire to ground them in clear and distinct general principles, which was nurtured by her strange late ...
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This chapter discusses the productive fictions of Maria Edgeworth. These works show Edgeworth's desire to ground them in clear and distinct general principles, which was nurtured by her strange late eighteenth-century blend of patriarchalism and productivism. Her sense of obligation was clearly the productive force in her writing career, but after producing Harrington to get rid of her didacticism and her anxiety about debt, she appears to have written her way out of her desire to write.Less
This chapter discusses the productive fictions of Maria Edgeworth. These works show Edgeworth's desire to ground them in clear and distinct general principles, which was nurtured by her strange late eighteenth-century blend of patriarchalism and productivism. Her sense of obligation was clearly the productive force in her writing career, but after producing Harrington to get rid of her didacticism and her anxiety about debt, she appears to have written her way out of her desire to write.
Marilyn Butler
- Published in print:
- 1988
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198129684
- eISBN:
- 9780191671838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198129684.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
The so-called Jacobin novelist seeks to dramatize and give value to the individual. He believes in the reality of the external social world, but he views it with hostility, and presents it angled ...
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The so-called Jacobin novelist seeks to dramatize and give value to the individual. He believes in the reality of the external social world, but he views it with hostility, and presents it angled through a single consciousness: it is an environment that at best puts pressure on his hero, at worst imprisons him. Judged by these criteria, Maria Edgeworth is unquestionably a Jacobin. And yet, in spite of her opinions, and the unusual clarity with which they are presented, her novels do not belong unequivocally to one side. She is far more nearly bi-partisan than Jane Austen, who begins to write about the same time. A more dedicated intellectual than Jane Austen, and through a combination of circumstances largely cut off from prior conditioning by her class, Maria Edgeworth found her own route to the contemporary battleground.Less
The so-called Jacobin novelist seeks to dramatize and give value to the individual. He believes in the reality of the external social world, but he views it with hostility, and presents it angled through a single consciousness: it is an environment that at best puts pressure on his hero, at worst imprisons him. Judged by these criteria, Maria Edgeworth is unquestionably a Jacobin. And yet, in spite of her opinions, and the unusual clarity with which they are presented, her novels do not belong unequivocally to one side. She is far more nearly bi-partisan than Jane Austen, who begins to write about the same time. A more dedicated intellectual than Jane Austen, and through a combination of circumstances largely cut off from prior conditioning by her class, Maria Edgeworth found her own route to the contemporary battleground.
W.J. Mc Cormack
- Published in print:
- 1985
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128069
- eISBN:
- 9780191671630
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128069.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter aims to place Maria Edgeworth's novel in a broader historical context and to illustrate that these extended boundaries permit viewing the novel as an active agent in an imaginative ...
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This chapter aims to place Maria Edgeworth's novel in a broader historical context and to illustrate that these extended boundaries permit viewing the novel as an active agent in an imaginative debate of lasting significance. This chapter focuses on the novel The Absentee and its implied meaning and relationship to the status of Catholics and the significance of the past, in the light of contemporary anti-revolutionary liberalism.Less
This chapter aims to place Maria Edgeworth's novel in a broader historical context and to illustrate that these extended boundaries permit viewing the novel as an active agent in an imaginative debate of lasting significance. This chapter focuses on the novel The Absentee and its implied meaning and relationship to the status of Catholics and the significance of the past, in the light of contemporary anti-revolutionary liberalism.
Marilyn Butler
- Published in print:
- 1996
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198182887
- eISBN:
- 9780191673900
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182887.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature, 18th-century Literature
Maria Edgeworth is one of many 18th- and 19th-century women writers now identified as having had a problematic relationship with her father. Where modern women value strong female models, earlier ...
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Maria Edgeworth is one of many 18th- and 19th-century women writers now identified as having had a problematic relationship with her father. Where modern women value strong female models, earlier women may have felt a need for sympathetic mentors, intellectual nurturers who were, perforce, more often the father. In Edgeworth’s childhood experience, life with father at home represented both emotional security and access to knowledge.Less
Maria Edgeworth is one of many 18th- and 19th-century women writers now identified as having had a problematic relationship with her father. Where modern women value strong female models, earlier women may have felt a need for sympathetic mentors, intellectual nurturers who were, perforce, more often the father. In Edgeworth’s childhood experience, life with father at home represented both emotional security and access to knowledge.
W.J. Mc Cormack
- Published in print:
- 1985
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198128069
- eISBN:
- 9780191671630
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198128069.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter discusses Castle Rackrent, an Irish novel by Maria Edgeworth which illustrates the history of Anglo-Irish fiction and the reflective qualities of a literary history. Besides disclosing ...
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This chapter discusses Castle Rackrent, an Irish novel by Maria Edgeworth which illustrates the history of Anglo-Irish fiction and the reflective qualities of a literary history. Besides disclosing the literary history of Ireland, the novel as well serves as a glimpse in to the genealogy of the Rackrents and a mirror of the discontinuities and crises of an emergent literary form in the age of revolution.Less
This chapter discusses Castle Rackrent, an Irish novel by Maria Edgeworth which illustrates the history of Anglo-Irish fiction and the reflective qualities of a literary history. Besides disclosing the literary history of Ireland, the novel as well serves as a glimpse in to the genealogy of the Rackrents and a mirror of the discontinuities and crises of an emergent literary form in the age of revolution.
Philip J. M. Sturgess
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198119548
- eISBN:
- 9780191671173
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198119548.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Defining narrativity as the enabling force of narrative, this is a full-length exploration of the concept in fiction. It develops the notion of a ‘logic of narrativity’, and by this means contributes ...
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Defining narrativity as the enabling force of narrative, this is a full-length exploration of the concept in fiction. It develops the notion of a ‘logic of narrativity’, and by this means contributes a new critical strategy to the field of narrative theory. The book also takes issue with a number of critical approaches which have in recent years acquired near-orthodox status in the matter of textual interpretation. Most prominent among these approaches are deconstruction and a particular form of Marxist criticism. The author's own theoretical claims are substantiated by readings of major 20th-century novels by Conrad, Joyce, Flann O'Brien, and Arthur Koestler, and the book concludes with an analysis of an earlier narrative, Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, which illustrates the wider premises of the theory and its applications.Less
Defining narrativity as the enabling force of narrative, this is a full-length exploration of the concept in fiction. It develops the notion of a ‘logic of narrativity’, and by this means contributes a new critical strategy to the field of narrative theory. The book also takes issue with a number of critical approaches which have in recent years acquired near-orthodox status in the matter of textual interpretation. Most prominent among these approaches are deconstruction and a particular form of Marxist criticism. The author's own theoretical claims are substantiated by readings of major 20th-century novels by Conrad, Joyce, Flann O'Brien, and Arthur Koestler, and the book concludes with an analysis of an earlier narrative, Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, which illustrates the wider premises of the theory and its applications.
Richard De Ritter
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719090332
- eISBN:
- 9781781707241
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090332.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
For Maria Edgeworth, women's exclusion from professional labour frees them from the requirement to tailor their knowledge to the demands of a single specialisation: it provides them with ‘leisure to ...
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For Maria Edgeworth, women's exclusion from professional labour frees them from the requirement to tailor their knowledge to the demands of a single specialisation: it provides them with ‘leisure to be wise’. This chapter questions the social utility of the intellectual capital that this formulation allows women to accrue. It compares accounts of female readers with their male counterparts, asking how the issue of gender helps to distinguish leisured wisdom from unproductive indolence. Using the example of Edgeworth's Belinda, it revisits the idea of reading as symbolic labour, attending both to its positive agency and its limitations.Less
For Maria Edgeworth, women's exclusion from professional labour frees them from the requirement to tailor their knowledge to the demands of a single specialisation: it provides them with ‘leisure to be wise’. This chapter questions the social utility of the intellectual capital that this formulation allows women to accrue. It compares accounts of female readers with their male counterparts, asking how the issue of gender helps to distinguish leisured wisdom from unproductive indolence. Using the example of Edgeworth's Belinda, it revisits the idea of reading as symbolic labour, attending both to its positive agency and its limitations.
Angelica Goodden
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199238095
- eISBN:
- 9780191716669
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199238095.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
From Sweden, Staël returns to London after an absence of twenty years, conferring with Whigs (for their liberalism rather than their pro-Napoleonism) and the ruling Tories, enjoying her celebrity, ...
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From Sweden, Staël returns to London after an absence of twenty years, conferring with Whigs (for their liberalism rather than their pro-Napoleonism) and the ruling Tories, enjoying her celebrity, and increasing it with the triumphant publication in French and English of De l'Allemagne. Fanny Burney, who greatly admires Staël's latest book, continues to regret the impossibility of meeting her, and Maria Edgeworth likewise; Byron, another enthusiast for the work, watches her ‘perform’ in society with both scorn and amusement, while statesmen are more or less shocked by her boldness in advising them how to handle war and peace. She enjoys her fame, but longs for Paris and French conversation; continuing to provoke both disapproval and interest, she finds that her foreignness excuses some of her social faux-pas but not others. The abolitionist Wilberforce becomes a friend, and she promises with Wellington to help propagate his writings in France.Less
From Sweden, Staël returns to London after an absence of twenty years, conferring with Whigs (for their liberalism rather than their pro-Napoleonism) and the ruling Tories, enjoying her celebrity, and increasing it with the triumphant publication in French and English of De l'Allemagne. Fanny Burney, who greatly admires Staël's latest book, continues to regret the impossibility of meeting her, and Maria Edgeworth likewise; Byron, another enthusiast for the work, watches her ‘perform’ in society with both scorn and amusement, while statesmen are more or less shocked by her boldness in advising them how to handle war and peace. She enjoys her fame, but longs for Paris and French conversation; continuing to provoke both disapproval and interest, she finds that her foreignness excuses some of her social faux-pas but not others. The abolitionist Wilberforce becomes a friend, and she promises with Wellington to help propagate his writings in France.
Matthew L. Reznicek
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781942954323
- eISBN:
- 9781786944320
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781942954323.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Thischapter reverses critical understandings of Maria Edgeworth’s representation of Paris in her last Irish Tale, which have often characterized the scenes in France as an interlude. Instead, this ...
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Thischapter reverses critical understandings of Maria Edgeworth’s representation of Paris in her last Irish Tale, which have often characterized the scenes in France as an interlude. Instead, this analysis reveals the complex role Paris plays in positioning Edgeworth’s writings in dialogue with the leading ideas of the French Enlightenment, especially those of the Abbé Morellet. Ormond’s Bildung becomes a rejection of speculative investments in favour of a more socially responsible form of economics.Less
Thischapter reverses critical understandings of Maria Edgeworth’s representation of Paris in her last Irish Tale, which have often characterized the scenes in France as an interlude. Instead, this analysis reveals the complex role Paris plays in positioning Edgeworth’s writings in dialogue with the leading ideas of the French Enlightenment, especially those of the Abbé Morellet. Ormond’s Bildung becomes a rejection of speculative investments in favour of a more socially responsible form of economics.
Robin Runia
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940605
- eISBN:
- 9781786945136
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940605.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter reexamines Maria Edgeworth’s relationship to Thomas Day through the lens of her intended first publication of de Genlis and of Edgeworth’s careful engagement with his Sandford and ...
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This chapter reexamines Maria Edgeworth’s relationship to Thomas Day through the lens of her intended first publication of de Genlis and of Edgeworth’s careful engagement with his Sandford and Merton to demonstrate that Edgeworth rejected perceived essential association between women and emotion or intellectual inferiority and that she denied domestic utility in arguments on behalf of a woman’s education that went beyond the typical feminine accomplishments. In addition, Edgeworth targeted Mary Wollstonecraft’s endorsement of Day through her deliberate 1798 revision of Letters for Literary Ladies and its invocation of Wollstonecraft’s ‘rights,’ exemplifying the potential for women writers to speak to their peers, both women and men, while they negotiated the business of eighteenth-century publishing.Less
This chapter reexamines Maria Edgeworth’s relationship to Thomas Day through the lens of her intended first publication of de Genlis and of Edgeworth’s careful engagement with his Sandford and Merton to demonstrate that Edgeworth rejected perceived essential association between women and emotion or intellectual inferiority and that she denied domestic utility in arguments on behalf of a woman’s education that went beyond the typical feminine accomplishments. In addition, Edgeworth targeted Mary Wollstonecraft’s endorsement of Day through her deliberate 1798 revision of Letters for Literary Ladies and its invocation of Wollstonecraft’s ‘rights,’ exemplifying the potential for women writers to speak to their peers, both women and men, while they negotiated the business of eighteenth-century publishing.
Vera Kreilkamp
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199251841
- eISBN:
- 9780191698064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199251841.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter considers the relationship between Irish fiction and Empire under the Union and in its aftermath. In Ireland's first major novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), Maria Edgeworth memorably ...
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This chapter considers the relationship between Irish fiction and Empire under the Union and in its aftermath. In Ireland's first major novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), Maria Edgeworth memorably anticipated a successful Union with Britain; thereafter, a rapid succession of works obsessively circled around the Act of Union's failure to resolve the matter of Ireland's ambiguous colonial status. The novels appear as repositories of British colonial assumptions and expressions of anti-British sentiment. As the straitened conditions of nineteenth and early twentieth-century artists and writers working in an economically and politically depressed former capital increased movement outward, the island's historic ties, not only with London, but also with a continental Catholicism, established France and Italy as fictional settings providing alternative perspectives on British imperialism. Such geographically expansive settings for Empire discourse suggest, once again, how Irish fiction significantly complicates the binary structures of a postcolonial emphasis on metropolitan centre and periphery.Less
This chapter considers the relationship between Irish fiction and Empire under the Union and in its aftermath. In Ireland's first major novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), Maria Edgeworth memorably anticipated a successful Union with Britain; thereafter, a rapid succession of works obsessively circled around the Act of Union's failure to resolve the matter of Ireland's ambiguous colonial status. The novels appear as repositories of British colonial assumptions and expressions of anti-British sentiment. As the straitened conditions of nineteenth and early twentieth-century artists and writers working in an economically and politically depressed former capital increased movement outward, the island's historic ties, not only with London, but also with a continental Catholicism, established France and Italy as fictional settings providing alternative perspectives on British imperialism. Such geographically expansive settings for Empire discourse suggest, once again, how Irish fiction significantly complicates the binary structures of a postcolonial emphasis on metropolitan centre and periphery.
Aileen Douglas
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198789185
- eISBN:
- 9780191831102
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198789185.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Maria Edgeworth, at one time the most prominent novelist writing in English, had a long and varied career. In works explicitly designed for different classes of readers, Edgeworth manifested a ...
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Maria Edgeworth, at one time the most prominent novelist writing in English, had a long and varied career. In works explicitly designed for different classes of readers, Edgeworth manifested a sustained interest in relationships between writing and social position. Her fiction often connects literacy and social mobility, and uses copying to represent access to social power. Copying is also an element in Edgeworth’s conception of herself as author. In Edgeworth’s final novel, Helen, a concern with copying is accompanied by an interest in the contemporary cult of the autograph, which the novel uses to explore the proper limits of celebrity and the commodification of the author in the market place. Walter Scott figures significantly in the novel. Edgeworth’s relationship with Scott, her interest in issues relating to Scott’s hand, and the sale of the Waverly manuscripts at public auction are a suggestive context for Edgeworth’s reflective treatment of modern authorship.Less
Maria Edgeworth, at one time the most prominent novelist writing in English, had a long and varied career. In works explicitly designed for different classes of readers, Edgeworth manifested a sustained interest in relationships between writing and social position. Her fiction often connects literacy and social mobility, and uses copying to represent access to social power. Copying is also an element in Edgeworth’s conception of herself as author. In Edgeworth’s final novel, Helen, a concern with copying is accompanied by an interest in the contemporary cult of the autograph, which the novel uses to explore the proper limits of celebrity and the commodification of the author in the market place. Walter Scott figures significantly in the novel. Edgeworth’s relationship with Scott, her interest in issues relating to Scott’s hand, and the sale of the Waverly manuscripts at public auction are a suggestive context for Edgeworth’s reflective treatment of modern authorship.
JoEllen DeLucia
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748695942
- eISBN:
- 9781474408677
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748695942.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
The final chapter argues that the questions about women and the civilizing process first raised in the relatively elite milieu of Montagu’s Bluestocking salons migrated into the popular fiction of ...
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The final chapter argues that the questions about women and the civilizing process first raised in the relatively elite milieu of Montagu’s Bluestocking salons migrated into the popular fiction of the Romantic era, shaping conversations about women and historical progress into the nineteenth century. The term conjectural fiction borrows from Dugald Stewart’s term “conjectural history,” which describes the stadial method of historiography developed during the Scottish Enlightenment. Conjectural fiction highlights Regina Maria Roche and Maria Edgeworth’s use of the feminine and aesthetic categories of delicacy, elegance, and beauty to gauge changing historical and economic conditions in their fiction. This comparative approach to charting progress also migrated into aesthetic theories from the same period, including Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), Lord Kames’s Essay on Criticism (1762), and Dugald Stewart’s Essay on Taste (1810).Less
The final chapter argues that the questions about women and the civilizing process first raised in the relatively elite milieu of Montagu’s Bluestocking salons migrated into the popular fiction of the Romantic era, shaping conversations about women and historical progress into the nineteenth century. The term conjectural fiction borrows from Dugald Stewart’s term “conjectural history,” which describes the stadial method of historiography developed during the Scottish Enlightenment. Conjectural fiction highlights Regina Maria Roche and Maria Edgeworth’s use of the feminine and aesthetic categories of delicacy, elegance, and beauty to gauge changing historical and economic conditions in their fiction. This comparative approach to charting progress also migrated into aesthetic theories from the same period, including Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), Lord Kames’s Essay on Criticism (1762), and Dugald Stewart’s Essay on Taste (1810).
Ellen Crowell
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625482
- eISBN:
- 9780748652051
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625482.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter compares dandyism in Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Southern literature, focusing on Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent and John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn. It argues that in these two ...
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This chapter compares dandyism in Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Southern literature, focusing on Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent and John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn. It argues that in these two texts, considered as foundational in the Irish big house and southern plantation novel traditions, the dandy figure's cultural and sexual decadence threatens colonial aristocracy. The chapter suggests that a common merger of aesthetics and proactive reform links the Anglo-Irish big house and Southern plantation novel literary traditions from their inception.Less
This chapter compares dandyism in Anglo-Irish and Anglo-Southern literature, focusing on Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent and John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn. It argues that in these two texts, considered as foundational in the Irish big house and southern plantation novel traditions, the dandy figure's cultural and sexual decadence threatens colonial aristocracy. The chapter suggests that a common merger of aesthetics and proactive reform links the Anglo-Irish big house and Southern plantation novel literary traditions from their inception.
Nicola J. Watson
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112976
- eISBN:
- 9780191670893
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112976.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Whatever happened to the epistolary novel? Why was it that by 1825 the principal narrative form of 18th-century fiction had been replaced by the third-person and often historicised models which have ...
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Whatever happened to the epistolary novel? Why was it that by 1825 the principal narrative form of 18th-century fiction had been replaced by the third-person and often historicised models which have predominated ever since? This original and wide-ranging study charts the suppression of epistolary fiction, exploring the attempted radicalization of the genre by Wollstonecraft and other feminists in the 1790s, its rejection and parody by Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, the increasingly discredited role played by letters in the historical novels of Jane Porter and Walter Scott, and their troubling, ghostly presence in the Gothic narratives of James Hogg and Charles Maturin. The shift in narrative method is seen as a response to anxieties about the French Revolution, with the epistolary, feminized, and sentimental plot replaced by a more authoritarian third-person mode as part of a wider redrawing of the relation between the individual and the social consensus.Less
Whatever happened to the epistolary novel? Why was it that by 1825 the principal narrative form of 18th-century fiction had been replaced by the third-person and often historicised models which have predominated ever since? This original and wide-ranging study charts the suppression of epistolary fiction, exploring the attempted radicalization of the genre by Wollstonecraft and other feminists in the 1790s, its rejection and parody by Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, the increasingly discredited role played by letters in the historical novels of Jane Porter and Walter Scott, and their troubling, ghostly presence in the Gothic narratives of James Hogg and Charles Maturin. The shift in narrative method is seen as a response to anxieties about the French Revolution, with the epistolary, feminized, and sentimental plot replaced by a more authoritarian third-person mode as part of a wider redrawing of the relation between the individual and the social consensus.
Claire Connolly
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199687084
- eISBN:
- 9780191766992
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199687084.003.0012
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter argues that authors of Irish Romantic novels and national tales, such as Maria Edgeworth and John and Michael Banim, are not only concerned with the extent to which their novels sought ...
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This chapter argues that authors of Irish Romantic novels and national tales, such as Maria Edgeworth and John and Michael Banim, are not only concerned with the extent to which their novels sought to copy from Irish culture but are also worried about the slightness of the novel form in relation to the copiousness of that culture. Such concerns led to attempts by Thomas Crofton Croker and others to add texture and tactility to their depictions of the Irish past, through antiquarian methodologies but also facsimiles, lithography, and other developments in print culture. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which Irish literary texts were concerned not only to accurately and minutely detail the past, but also to adduce evidence of such historical and cultural authenticity, working against teleological accounts of the birth of the modern historical method, which see Romantic history as unconcerned with the evidentiary foundations of the past.Less
This chapter argues that authors of Irish Romantic novels and national tales, such as Maria Edgeworth and John and Michael Banim, are not only concerned with the extent to which their novels sought to copy from Irish culture but are also worried about the slightness of the novel form in relation to the copiousness of that culture. Such concerns led to attempts by Thomas Crofton Croker and others to add texture and tactility to their depictions of the Irish past, through antiquarian methodologies but also facsimiles, lithography, and other developments in print culture. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which Irish literary texts were concerned not only to accurately and minutely detail the past, but also to adduce evidence of such historical and cultural authenticity, working against teleological accounts of the birth of the modern historical method, which see Romantic history as unconcerned with the evidentiary foundations of the past.
Nicola J. Watson
- Published in print:
- 1994
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198112976
- eISBN:
- 9780191670893
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112976.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
This chapter pursues a related and amplified thematics of ‘right reading’ in the early novels of Scott and a number of fellow writers — Lady Sydney Morgan and Maria Edgeworth amongst them — novels ...
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This chapter pursues a related and amplified thematics of ‘right reading’ in the early novels of Scott and a number of fellow writers — Lady Sydney Morgan and Maria Edgeworth amongst them — novels which subordinate the individual sensibility associated with the letter and the residue of the Rousseauistic plot to social, indeed national and historical, consensus. The chapter is particularly concerned with tracing the recuperative transliteration of epistolary correspondence into the competing fictions of historiography, a transliteration which allows for the selective authentication of one socially healing version of a national past.Less
This chapter pursues a related and amplified thematics of ‘right reading’ in the early novels of Scott and a number of fellow writers — Lady Sydney Morgan and Maria Edgeworth amongst them — novels which subordinate the individual sensibility associated with the letter and the residue of the Rousseauistic plot to social, indeed national and historical, consensus. The chapter is particularly concerned with tracing the recuperative transliteration of epistolary correspondence into the competing fictions of historiography, a transliteration which allows for the selective authentication of one socially healing version of a national past.
Amy M. King
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195161519
- eISBN:
- 9780199787838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195161519.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter focuses on the set of meanings about botany and botanical practices that were forming in the 18th century to understand the botanical vernacular in its emergent stages. It argues that ...
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This chapter focuses on the set of meanings about botany and botanical practices that were forming in the 18th century to understand the botanical vernacular in its emergent stages. It argues that the bloom narrative emerged from the Linnaean context and then developed as a literary narrative; bloom does not shift in accordance with the botanical changes of the 1830s and beyond but rather with the literary tides out of which that narrative grew. Maria Edgeworth's Belinda, and the poems of Charlotte Smith and Erasmus Darwin are analyzed.Less
This chapter focuses on the set of meanings about botany and botanical practices that were forming in the 18th century to understand the botanical vernacular in its emergent stages. It argues that the bloom narrative emerged from the Linnaean context and then developed as a literary narrative; bloom does not shift in accordance with the botanical changes of the 1830s and beyond but rather with the literary tides out of which that narrative grew. Maria Edgeworth's Belinda, and the poems of Charlotte Smith and Erasmus Darwin are analyzed.
John Owen Havard
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- April 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198833130
- eISBN:
- 9780191881558
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198833130.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter re-examines the party-political career of Edmund Burke and the writings of Maria Edgeworth in relation to a deep history of Anglo-Irish ‘discontents’ and their challenges to the ‘count’ ...
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This chapter re-examines the party-political career of Edmund Burke and the writings of Maria Edgeworth in relation to a deep history of Anglo-Irish ‘discontents’ and their challenges to the ‘count’ of politics. Complicating ‘Burkean’ appeals to hierarchy and order, the chapter uncovers the conflicted party identity that is apparent within writings by and about Edmund Burke, returning to view the various channels of feeling engaged, for example, during his involvement in debates over ‘absentee’ landlords. The chapter goes on to give a reading of The Absentee (1812) that calls attention to recalcitrant elements that exceed systems of representation in Edgeworth’s novel, which remains animated in this reading by those elements left behind, in both senses, by emergent systems of governance. The chapter’s opening section speculates about the role of biography in Lewis Namier’s History of Parliament and asks how the novel form, in the hands of women writers, provided unique vantage points on political systems organized around men.Less
This chapter re-examines the party-political career of Edmund Burke and the writings of Maria Edgeworth in relation to a deep history of Anglo-Irish ‘discontents’ and their challenges to the ‘count’ of politics. Complicating ‘Burkean’ appeals to hierarchy and order, the chapter uncovers the conflicted party identity that is apparent within writings by and about Edmund Burke, returning to view the various channels of feeling engaged, for example, during his involvement in debates over ‘absentee’ landlords. The chapter goes on to give a reading of The Absentee (1812) that calls attention to recalcitrant elements that exceed systems of representation in Edgeworth’s novel, which remains animated in this reading by those elements left behind, in both senses, by emergent systems of governance. The chapter’s opening section speculates about the role of biography in Lewis Namier’s History of Parliament and asks how the novel form, in the hands of women writers, provided unique vantage points on political systems organized around men.
Robin Runia
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786940520
- eISBN:
- 9781789629170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786940520.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Lord Glenthorn, of Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809), suffers with a debilitating apathy and indifference unless continuously stimulated by external factors. Robin Runia reads this symptomatology within ...
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Lord Glenthorn, of Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809), suffers with a debilitating apathy and indifference unless continuously stimulated by external factors. Robin Runia reads this symptomatology within the frame of late eighteenth-century definitions of hypochondriasis, which firmly associated the condition not just with the indolence of the wealthy but also with a foreign decadence. Trying to rid himself of his ennui, Glenthorn trials numerous fashionable activities of the wealthy but finds consolation only in the domestic sphere and the peaceable routines of his servants. Ennui is Edgeworth’s critique of the ‘rampant moral plague of luxury’, but, more importantly in offering a domestic remedy based on duty and the importance of home, it associates the health of the male body with the knowledge and culture of women.Less
Lord Glenthorn, of Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809), suffers with a debilitating apathy and indifference unless continuously stimulated by external factors. Robin Runia reads this symptomatology within the frame of late eighteenth-century definitions of hypochondriasis, which firmly associated the condition not just with the indolence of the wealthy but also with a foreign decadence. Trying to rid himself of his ennui, Glenthorn trials numerous fashionable activities of the wealthy but finds consolation only in the domestic sphere and the peaceable routines of his servants. Ennui is Edgeworth’s critique of the ‘rampant moral plague of luxury’, but, more importantly in offering a domestic remedy based on duty and the importance of home, it associates the health of the male body with the knowledge and culture of women.
