Ireland, India and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Literature

An innovative study of Irish writing about India and imperialism, revealing how one colonised nation writes about another.

Julia M. Wright (Author)

9780521868228, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 April 2007

284 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.59 kg

'… Wright directs our attention to the complexities and ambiguities of Irish nationalism during the period. … this one is a welcome addition to the study of nineteenth-century Irish writing on India.' Daniel S. Roberts, Queen's University Belfast

In this innovative study Julia M. Wright addresses rarely asked questions: how and why does one colonized nation write about another? Wright focuses on the way nineteenth-century Irish writers wrote about India, showing how their own experience of colonial subjection and unfulfilled national aspirations informed their work. Their writings express sympathy with the colonised or oppressed people of India in order to unsettle nineteenth-century imperialist stereotypes, and demonstrate their own opposition to the idea and reality of empire. Drawing on Enlightenment philosophy, studies of nationalism, and postcolonial theory, Wright examines fiction by Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan, gothic tales by Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde, poetry by Thomas Moore and others, as well as a wide array of non-fiction prose. In doing so she opens up new avenues in Irish studies and nineteenth-century literature.

Introduction: Insensible Empire
Part I. National Feeling, Colonial Mimicry, and Sympathetic Resolutions: 1. 'National feeling': the politics of Irish sensibility
2. Empowering the colonized
or, virtue rewarded
3. Travellers, converts, and demagogues
Part II. Colonial Gothic and the Circulation of Wealth: 4. On the frontier: imitation and colonial wealth in Edgeworth and Lewis
5. 'Some neglected children': thwarted colonial genealogies
6. Stoker and Wilde: all points east
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]