In the late 1840s, more than one million Irish men and women died of starvation and disease, and a further two million emigrated in one of the worst European sustenance crises of modern times. Yet a general feeling persists that the Irish Famine has eluded satisfactory representation. Writing the Irish Famine examines literary texts by writers such as William Carleton, Anthony Trollope, James Clarence Mangan, John Mitchel, and Samuel Ferguson, and reveals how they interact with histories, sermons, and economic treatises to construct a narrative of one of the most important and elusive events in Irish history.
In this strikingly original and compelling contribution to Irish cultural studies, Christopher Morash explores the concept of the Famine as a moment of absence. He argues that the event constitutes an unspeakable moment in attempts to write the past - a point at which the great Victorian metanarratives of historical change collapse. Aligning itself with new historicist literary criticism, Writing the Irish Famine examines the attempts of a wide range of nineteenth-century writing to ensure the memorialization of an event which seems to resist representation.
This book is an original and compelling contribution to Irish cultural studies. Morash examines literary texts by writers such as William Carleton. Anthony Trollope, James Clarence Mangan, John Mitchel, and Samuel Ferguson to reveal how they interact with histories, sermons, and economic treatises and construct a narrative of one of the most important and elusive events in Irish history. Drawing on the methodology new historicist literary criticism, he examines the attempts of a wide range of nineteenth-century writing to ensure the memorialization of an event that seems to resist representation.
