From 1800 to 1830, Irish writers and orators gave a new visibility and viability to Irish literature in English. This groundbreaking survey of Irish literature of the period provides an enlightening and accessible account covering both well-known authors like Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Charles Maturin, and Thomas Moore, and a cacophony of less well-known voices. Figures from barristers to politicians, from ideologues to academics, and from hacks to ascetics together created a rowdy and flamboyant debate about the nature of Irish genius. Frequently rejected by British and Irish observers alike as overly florid and suspiciously sentimental, Irish writing in the Romantic period gives a fascinating window into debates about the role and nature of oratory in an increasingly democratising society. This is a landmark study not only in the field of Irish literature, but also in wider histories of rhetoric and the Romantic period.
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A comprehensive account of Irish writing and oratory from 1800 to 1830, exploring the rise of Irish literature in English.
1. Introduction: figures and feelings in Irish romanticism;
2. 'The
spell of sweet persuasion': Sydney Owenson on eloquence and the nation;
3.
'The manner of being': edgeworth, rhetoric, and realism;
4. 'Irish oratory
and scotch reviewing': persuasion and conviction in post-napoleonic Britain;
5. The beggar at the door: Thomas Moore and the tone of Irish Romanticism;
6.
'The pollution of my own cathedral': the revelations of Charles Robert
Maturin;
7. 'The great, the good, the eloquent, the Irish, the Catholic
O'Connell': the Banim brothers and literature in the decade of emancipation;
8. Conclusion: 'clouds of sublimated nonsense'; Irish eloquence during/after
history;
9. Bibliography.
Jim Kelly is Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University of Exeter. He has published widely in the field of Irish Romanticism, including previous books Charles Maturin: Authorship, Authenticity, and the Nation (2011) and Ireland and Romanticism: Publics, Nations, and Scenes of Cultural Production (2011).
