Engl 803: Gender and the Nation: 18th-Century Irish Women Writers
Spring, 2001
Dr. Leith Davis
email: leith@sfu.ca
web site: http://www.sfu.ca/personal/leith
"As mothers of the nation [women] are precariously other to the nation."
-Mary Louise Pratt
"[I]sn't the [so-called totality of the nation] the shifting expression of equilibrium among the many forces that constitute and operate the horizon: gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, etc.?"
-R. Radhakrishnan
This course will examine three eighteenth-century Irish women writers, Charlotte Brooke, Maria Edgeworth, and Sidney Owenson, using their work as a focal point for larger questions concerning the intersections of gender and national identity. We will begin by exploring the ways in which women have been used to represent the nation in Ireland, then move to a consideration of the gender dynamics involved in the colonial relationship between England and Ireland, dynamics which, as Joseph Valente points out, were made more complicated by ambivalent position that women already occupied in the repetoire of Irish national symbols. General readings on women and national identity, Ireland and postcolonial studies and on revisionism and post-revisionism in Irish history will give us a basis on which to build our specific readings of the three writers' texts: Brooke's antiquarian Reliques of Irish Poetry; Edgeworth's early writings and her novels, Castle Rackrent and The Absentee; and Owenson's Twelve Hibernian Melodies, her novel, The Wild Irish Girl, and selections from her poetic works, The Lay of an Irish Harp. Throughout the course, we will pay attention to the ways in which women writers use and alter the genres available to them: antiquarian writing, conduct literature, musical collections, novels and poetry.
Requirements:
Two Seminar Presentations: 30%
Participation and Attendance: 10%
Final Paper (15): 60% Final papers are due April 6th, 2001
Week 1: Jan 5
Introduction:
Week 2: Jan 12
Critical Issues in Irish Studies: Revisionism and Colonialism
Terry Eagleton, "Revisionism Revisited" from Crazy John and the Bishop;
David Cairns and Shawn Richards: "What Ish My Nation?" from Writing Ireland;
David Lloyd, "Regarding Ireland in a Postcolonial Frame" from Ireland After History
Seamus Heaney, "Bog Queen"
Seminar: Edmund Spenser, from A View of the Present State of Ireland;
Week 3: Jan 19
***CLASS BEGINS AT 3:30 Today***
Gender and Irish Studies
Anne McClintock, "Introduction" to Imperial Leather;
Joseph Valente, "The Myth of Sovereignty: Gender in the Literature of Irish Nationalism":
Terry Eagleton, "Revisionism Revisited" from Crazy John and the Bishop;
David Cairns and Shawn Richards: "What Ish My Nation?" from Writing Ireland;
David Lloyd, "Regarding Ireland in a Postcolonial Frame" from Ireland After History
Seamus Heaney, "Bog Queen"
Seminar: Edmund Spenser, from A View of the Present State of Ireland;
Week 3: Jan 19
***CLASS BEGINS AT 3:30 Today***
Gender and Irish Studies
Anne McClintock, "Introduction" to Imperial Leather;
Joseph Valente, "The Myth of Sovereignty: Gender in the Literature of Irish Nationalism"
Seminar: Any TWO of: "Serglige Con Culainn" ("The Wasting Sickness of Cu Culainn"); "Caillech Bérri" ("The Old Woman of Beare"); Aogán Ó Rathaille, "Mac an Cheannaí"; Eileen O'Leary, "The Lament for Art O'Leary"; Thomas Moore, "Oh! Breathe Not His Name" and "She is Far from the Land"; James Clarence Mangan, "Dark Rosaleen";
Week 4: Jan 26
Charlotte Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry
Seminar: "The Tale of Maon"
Week 5: Feb. 2
Women, Republicanism and Rebellion in 18th-Century Ireland
Mary Helen Thuente, "Liberty, Hibernia and Mary Le More: United Irish Images of Women";
Anna Kinsella, "Nineteenth-century perspectives: The women of 1798 in folk memory and ballads";
Nancy Curtin,
Seminar: Mary O'Brien, "The Freedom of John Bull"; "Nationalist Verse of the 1790s"
Week 6 Feb. 9
Maria Edgeworth: Castle Rackrent
Seminar: Edgeworth and the Union
Week 7 Feb. 16
Maria Edgeworth: Ennui
Seminar: Maria Edgeworth and Richard Lovell Edgeworth
Week 8 Feb. 23
***Spring Break: no class***
Week 9: March 2
Maria Edgeworth: The Absentee
Seminar: Edgeworth's social projects
Week 10: March 9
Sidney Owenson: Hibernian Melodies and Lay of an Irish Harp
Seminar: Owenson and Irish music
Week 11: March 16
Sidney Owenson: The Wild Irish Girl
Seminar: Owenson and the "National Tale"
Week 12: March 23
Eavan Boland: Object Lessons
Seminar: Eavan Boland's poetry: including "Night Feed," "Ode to Suburbia" and "The Woman Turns Herself into a Fish."
Week 13: March 30
Mini-conference: presentation of papers
Seminars:
Each student will be responsible for presenting two seminars. Each seminar should consist of a 15-minute presentation which may be written down, but which should be presented with an audience in mind. Students should be prepared to lead the ensuing discussion. A grade will be assigned which takes both the presentation and the discussion into account.
Each student will be responsible for presenting two seminars. Each seminar should consist of a 15-minute presentation which may be written down, but which should be presented with an audience in mind. Students should be prepared to lead the ensuing discussion. A grade will be assigned which takes both the presentation and the discussion into account.
English 803 Bibliography
Charlotte Brooke
Davis, Leith. "Birth of the Nation: Gender and Writing in the Work of Henry and Charlotte Brooke." Eighteenth-Century Life 18.1 (1994): 27-47.
O'Hainle, Cathal G. "Toward the Revival: Some Translations of Irish Poetry, 1789-1897." Literature and the Changing Ireland. Ed. Peter Connolly. Gerrards Cross, Eng.; Totowa, NJ: Colin Smythe; Barnes and Noble, 1982.
Maria Edgeworth
Altieri, Joanne. "Style and Purpose in Maria Edgeworth's Fiction." Nineteenth Century Fiction 23 (1968): 265-278.
Belanger, Jacqueline. "Educating the Reading Public: British Critical Reception of Maria Edgeworth's Early Irish Writing." Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies 28.2 (1998 Autumn-Winter): 240-55.
Bellamy, Liz. "Regionalism and Nationalism: Maria Edgeworth, Walter Scott and the Definition of Britishness." The Regional Novel in Britain and Ireland, 1800-1990. Ed. K.D.M. Snell. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 54-77.
Bilger, Audrey. Laughing feminism : subversive comedy in Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: a literary biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
---. "Edgeworth's Stern Father: Escaping Thomas Day, 1795-1801." Tradition in Transition: Women writers, Marginal Texts, and the Eighteenth Century Canon. Ed. Alvero S.J.; Basker Ribeiro, James G. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996. 75-93.
Cary, Meredith. "Privileged Assimilation: Maria Edgeworth's Hope for the Ascendancy." Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies 26.4 (1991 Winter): 29-37.
Corbett, Mary Jean. "Another Tale to Tell: Postcolonial Theory and the Case of Castle Rackrent." Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 36.3 (1994 Summer): 383-400.
---. "Public Affections and Familial Politics: Burke, Edgeworth, and the 'Common Naturalization' of Great Britain." ELH 61.4 (1994 Winter): 877-97.
Costello, Julie. "Maria Edgeworth and the Politics of Consumption: Eating, Breastfeeding, and the Irish Wet Nurse in Ennui." Inventing Maternity: Politics, Science, and Literature, 1650-1865. Ed. Greenfield, Susan C; Barash, Carol. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1999. 173-92.
Croghan, Martin J. "Swift, Thomas Sheridan, Maria Edgeworth and the Evolution of Hiberno-English." Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies 20.1 (1990 Spring): 19-34.
Edwards, Duane. "The Narrator of Castle Rackrent." South Atlantic Quarterly 71 (1972): 124-29.
Edgeworth, Maria. Early lessons in two volumes, by Maria Edgeworth. A new -- ed. London: Printed for R. Hunter and Baldwin Cradock and Joy, 1815.
---. Tales and novels, by Maria Edgeworth. London: Whittaker and co. [etc etc. ], 1848.
Edgeworth, Maria, and Augustus J. C. Hare. The life and letters of Maria Edgeworth. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and company, 1895.
Edgeworth, Maria, and Austin Dobson. Tales from Maria Edgeworth. [London]: Wells Gardner Darton & Co., 1903.
Edgeworth, Maria, and Florence Valentine Barry. Maria Edgeworth: chosen letters. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin company, 1931.
Edgeworth, Maria, and Bodleian Library. Women, education, and literature
the papers of Maria Edgeworth, 1768-1849. Marlborough, Wiltshire, England: Adam Matthew, 1994.
Graham, Colin. "History, Gender and the Colonial Moment: Castle Rackrent." Irish Studies Review 14 (1996 Spring): 21-24.
Gilmartin, Sophie. Ancestry and narrative in nineteenth-century British literature: blood relations from Edgeworth to Hardy. Cambridge; NY: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Gonda, Caroline. Reading daughters' fictions 1709-1834: novels and society from Manley to Edgeworth. Cambridge and NY: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Hack, Daniel. "Inter-Nationalism: Castle Rackrent and Anglo-Irish Union." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 29.2 (1996 Winter): 145-64.
Harden, O. Elizabeth McWhorter. Maria Edgeworth's art of prose fiction. The Hague: Mouton, 1971.
---. Maria Edgeworth. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984.
Hawthorne, Mark D. Doubt and dogma in Maria Edgeworth. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1967.
Hollingworth, Brian. "Completing the Union: Edgeworth's The Absentee and Scott the Novelist; Sel. Papers from 4th Internat. Scott Conf., Edinburgh, 1991." Scott in Carnival. Ed. Alexander, J.H.; Hewitt, David. Aberdeen: Assn. for Scottish Lit. Studies, 1993.
---. Maria Edgeworth's Irish Writing: Language, History, Politics. Houndmills, England--; NY: Macmillan--St. Martin's, 1997.
Hurst, Michael. Maria Edgeworth and the public scene: intellect, fine feeling and landlordism in the age of reform. London: Macmillan, 1969.
Kelly, Gary. "Class, Gender, Nation, and Empire: Money and Merit in the Writing of the Edgeworths." The Wordsworth Circle 25.2 (1994 Spring): 89-93.
Kirkpatrick, Kathryn. "Putting Down the Rebellion: Notes and Glosses on Castle Rackrent, 1800." Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies 30.1 (1995 Spring): 77-90.
Kowaleski Wallace, Beth. "Reading the Father Metaphorically." Refiguring the Father: New Feminist Readings of Patriarchy. Ed. Kowaleski-Wallace, Beth; Yaeger, Patricia; Miller, Nancy K. Carbondale, IL: U of Illinois P, 1989. 296-11.
---. Their fathers' daughters: Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and patriarchal complicity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Lubbers, Klaus. "Author and Audience in the Early Nineteenth Century." Literature and the Changing Ireland. Ed. Peter Connolly. Gerrards Cross, Eng.; Totowa, NJ: Colin Smythe; Barnes & Noble, 1982.
McCormack, William J. "Romantic Union: Burke, Ireland, and Wordsworth." Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies 20.1 (1985 Spring): 73-95.
Mellor, Anne K. "A Novel of Their Own: Romantic Women's Fiction, 1790-1830." The Columbia History of the British Novel. Ed. Richetti, John; Bender, John; David, Deirdre; Seidel, Michael. NY: Columbia UP, 1994.
Michals, Teresa. "Commerce and Character in Maria Edgeworth." Nineteenth Century Literature 49.1 (1994 June): 1-20.
Murray, Patrick. "Maria Edgeworth and Her Father: The Literary Partnership." Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies 6.3 (1971): 39-50.
Myers, Mitzi. "The Dilemmas of Gender as Double-Voiced Narrative; Or, Maria Edgeworth Mothers the Bildungsroman." The Idea of the Novel in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Robert W. Uphaus. East Lansing,MI: Colleagues, 1988. 67-96.
---. "Romancing the Moral Tale: Maria Edgeworth and the Problematics of Pedagogy." Romanticism and Children's Literature in Nineteenth Century England. Ed. James Holt McGavran Jr. Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1991. 96-128.
---. "Goring John Bull: Maria Edgeworth's Hibernian High Jinks versus the Imperialist Imaginary." Cutting Edges: Postmodern Critical Essays on Eighteenth Century Satire. Ed. James E. Gill. Knoxville, TN: U of Tennessee Press, 1995. 367-94.
---. "Shot from Canons: Or, Maria Edgeworth and the Cultural Production and Consumption of the Late Eighteenth-Century Woman Writer." The Consumption of Culture, 1600-1800: Image, Object, Text. Ed. Bermingham, Ann; Brewer, John. NY: Routledge, 1995. 193-214.
---. "Canonical 'Orphans' and Critical Ennui: Rereading Edgeworth's Cross-Writing." Children's Literature: Annual of The Modern Language Association Division on Children's Literature and The Children's Literature Association 25 (1997): 116-36.
---. "War Correspondence: Maria Edgeworth and the En-Gendering of Revolution, Rebellion, and Union." Eighteenth Century Life 22.3 (1998 Nov): 74-91.
Newcomer, James. "Castle Rackrent: Its Structure and Its Irony." Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 8 (1966): 170-179.
---. Maria Edgeworth. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1973.
Ni Chuilleanain, Eilean. "The Voices of Maria Edgeworth's Comedy." The Comic Tradition in Irish Women Writers. Ed. Theresa O'Connor. Gainsville: UP of Florida, 1996. 21-39.
O'Neill, Patrick. "Image and Reception: The German Fortunes of Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Thomas Moore, and Charles Maturin." Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 6.1 (1980): 36-49.
Owens, Coilin. Family Chronicles: Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent. Dublin; Totowa: Wolfhound; Barnes and Noble, 1987.
Pearson, Jacqueline. "'Arts of Appropriation': Language, Circulation, and Appropriation in the Work of Maria Edgeworth." Yearbook of English Studies 28 (1998): 212-34.
Shaffer, Julie. "Not Subordinate: Empowering Women in the Marriage Plot - - The Novels of Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen." Reading with a Difference: Gender, Race, and Cultural Identity. Ed. Marotti, Arthur F.; Wasserman Renata R. Mauntner; Dulan, Jo; Mathur, Suchitra. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1993. 400.
Tobin, Beth Fowkes. "Conserving Patriarchy." Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 36.1 (1995 Spring): 91-96.
Tracy, Robert. "Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan: Legality versus Legitimacy." Nineteenth-Century Literature 40.1 (1985 June): 1-22.
---. "'The Cracked Lookingglass of a Servant': Inventing the Colonial Novel." Rereading Texts/Rethinking Critical Presuppositions: Essays in Honour of H.M. Daleski. Ed. Kenan Shlomith; Toker Rimmon, Leona; Barzilai, Shuli. Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 1997. 197-212.
Uphaus, Robert W. The Idea of the novel in the eighteenth century. East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1988.
Wilson, Carol Shiner. "Lost Needles, Tangled Threads: Stichery, Domesticity, and the Artistic Enterprise in Barbauld, Edgeworth, Taylor, and Lamb." Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837. Ed. Carol Shiner; Haefner Wilson, Joel. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1994.
Wohlgemut, Esther. "Maria Edgeworth and the Question of National Identity." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 39.4 (1999 Autumn): 645-58.
Wright, Julia M. "Courting Public Opinion: Handling Informers in the 1790s." Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies 32-33.4 (1997-1998 Winter-Spring-Summer): 1-2, 144-69.
Sidney Owenson (Lady Morgan)
Andrews, Elmer. "Aesthetics, Politics and Identity: Lady Morgan's The Wild Irish Girl." Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 12.2 (1987 December): 7-19.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan : the life and times of Sydney Owenson. London: Pandora, 1988.
Corbett, Mary Jean. "Allegories of Prescription: Engendering Union in The Wild Irish Girl." Eighteenth-Century Life 22.3 (1998 November): 92-102.
Dunne, Tom. "Fiction as 'the Best History of Nations': Lady Morgan's Irish Novels; Papers Read before Irish Conf. of Historians, Held at University Coll. Cork, 23-26 May 1985." The Writer as Witness: Literature as Historical Evidence. Ed. Tom Dunne. Cork: Cork UP, 1987.
Ferris, Ina. "Narrating Cultural Encounter: Lady Morgan and the Irish National Tale." Nineteenth-Century Literature 51.3 (1996 December): 287-303.
---. "Writing the Border: The National Tale, Female Writing, and the Public Sphere." Romanticism, History and the Possibilities of Genre: Re-Forming Literature, 1789-1837. Ed. Tilottama Rajan and Julia M. Wright. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Leerssen, J. Th. "How The Wild Irish Girl Made Ireland Romantic." The Clash of Ireland: Literary Contrasts and Connections. Ed. Barfoot C.C.; Theo D'haen. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989.
---. Th. "Fiction Poetics and Cultural Stereotypes: Local Colour in Scott, Morgan and Maturin." The Modern Language Review 86.2 (1991 April): 273-84.
Lew, Joseph W. "Sidney Owenson and the Fate of Empire." Keats-Shelley Journal: Keats, Shelley, Byron, Hunt and Their Circle 39 (1990): 39-65.
Moskal, Jeanne. "Gender, Nationality, and Textual Authority in Lady Morgan's Travel Books." Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Ed. Paula R. Feldman; Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995.
Newcomer, James. Lady Morgan the novelist. Lewisburg [Pa.]; London: Bucknell University Press ; Associated University Presses, 1990.
Sha, Richard C. "Expanding the Limits of Feminine Writing: The Prose Sketches of Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan) and Helen Maria Williams." Romantic Women Writers: Voices and Countervoices. Ed. Paula R. Feldman; Theresa M. Kelley. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995.
Stevenson, Lionel. The wild Irish girl; the life of Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan, 1776-1859. London: Chapman & Hall, 1936.
Tracy, Robert. "Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan: Legality versus Legitimacy." Nineteenth-Century Literature 40.1 (1985 June): 1-22.
Wright, Julia M. "'The Nation Begins to Form': Competing Nationalisms in Morgan's The O'Briens and the O'Flaherty's." ELH 66.4 (1999 Winter): 939-63.