A bookish history of Irish Romanticism

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Date
2014-11-27
Authors
Connolly, Claire
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Oxford University Press
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Abstract
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.
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Ireland , Book history , Maria Edgeworth , John Banim , Michael Banim , Thomas Crofton Croker , Antiquarianism , Facsimiles , Lithography , Print culture
Citation
Connolly, C. (2014) 'A bookish history of Irish Romanticism' in Fermanis, P. and Regan, J. (eds.) Rethinking British Romantic History, 1770-1845. Oxford : Oxford University Press.
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© 2014, Oxford University Press. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.