Allegories of Union in Irish and English Writing, 1790–1870: Politics, History, and the Family from Edgeworth to Arnold

by Mary Jean Corbett

• ISBN13: 9780521120944
• ISBN10: 0521120942
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-01
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this book, Mary Jean Corbett explores fictional and non-fictional representations of Ireland's relationship with England throughout the nineteenth century. Through postcolonial and feminist theory, she considers how cross-cultural contact is negotiated through tropes of marriage and family, and demonstrates how familial rhetoric sometimes works to sustain, sometimes to contest the structures of colonial inequality. Analyzing novels by Edgeworth, Owenson, Gaskell, Kingsley, and Trollope, as well as writings by Burke, Carlyle, Engels, Arnold, and Mill, Corbett argues that the colonizing imperative for 'reforming' the Irish in an age of imperial expansion constitutes a largely unrecognized but crucial element in the rhetorical project of English nation-formation. By situating her readings within the varying historical and rhetorical contexts that shape them, she revises the critical orthodoxies surrounding colonial discourse that currently prevail in Irish and English studies, and offers a fresh perspective on important aspects of Victorian culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Public affections and familial politics: Burke, Edgeworth, and Ireland in the 1790s

Allegories of prescription: engendering union in Owenson and Edgeworth

Troubling others: representing the Immigrant Irish in Urban England at mid-century

Plotting colonial authority: Trollope's Ireland, 1845-1860

England's opportunity, England's character: Arnold, Mill and the Fate of the Union in the 1860s

Afterword

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.