Brief Description:

This course will examine literary depictions of Ireland in the Romantic century (1750-1850) in light of what William Drennan called in 1799 the "policy of geography." Our focus will be literary texts by British and Irish authors that engage three overlapping geopolitical arenas: the transatlantic, Europe, and the British Empire.

Required Texts:

• The Last Man by Mary Shelley, ed. Morton D. Paley (Oxford UP, 1998)
• The School for Scandal and Other Plays by R. B. Sheridan, ed. Michael Cordner (Oxford UP, 1998)
• The Missionary by Lady Morgan, ed. Julia M. Wright (Broadview, 2002)
• Irish Literature, 1750-1900: An Anthology, ed. Julia M. Wright (Blackwell, 2007) (available in the bookstore in mid-January; if it is delayed, the necessary pages will be left in the English office; readings for January 29th are already in the English office)
• Course packet (in English office)

Assignments:

• report (12-15 minutes), 15%
• seminar (20-25 minutes), 25%
• essay (5000-6000 words), due 14 April 2008, 50%
• participation, 10%

N. B. All work must be fully and properly documented in accordance with MLA style and university policies.

Students must sign up for their reports and seminars by January 22^nd. The report should, like a scholarly book review, critically analyze the specified material, conveying the import of the material to the class as well as your analysis of it. The seminar can be used to address any course-related topic in connection with one, or more, of the works of literature assigned for the week in which it is presented; arguments may be tentative and questions may be raised as well as answered, but the seminar should be helpful to the class and facilitate class discussion. Both the report and the seminar must be submitted in writing one week after they are presented. It is strongly recommended that you present formally written reports and seminars (revising only slightly in response to comments and class discussion after presentation); graduate-level analysis is rarely possible in informal presentations.

The essay may be derived from your seminar, but must be substantially different from it; that is, material carried over from the seminar must be further developed, particularly with my comments and class discussion in mind, as well as supplemented by entirely new material. The participation grade will be based on contributions to class discussion, whether questions, comments, or answers, and the quality of those contributions will be the primary consideration. I am open, as a matter of principle, to any coherent and well-applied critical methodology relevant to the course material and focus.

    January 8^th: Introduction: Some Key Concepts

January 15^th: David Hume, "Of National Characters" (1748)!; excerpt from Christopher GoGwilt, The Fiction of Geopolitics (2000)!; excerpt from William Drennan, Letter to William Pitt (1799)!

January 22^nd: David Lloyd, "Introduction" to Nationalism and Minor Literature (1987)!; Andrew Murphy, "Revising Criticism: Ireland and the British Model" (2002)!; excerpt from Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)!; Edgeworth, "Limerick Gloves" (1804)*

January 29^th: Thomas Sheridan, The Brave Irishman (1759 version)*; John Leslie, Killarney (1772)*

February 5^th: R. B. Sheridan, The Critic (1779); James Orr, "The Passengers" (1804)*

February 12^th: J. J. Callanan, "Lines" (1830)*; "O’Connell’s Call and Pat’s Reply" (lithograph, 1843)*; "A Voice from America" (Anon., 1843)*; Thomas D’Arcy McGee, "Hail to the Land," "Experience," and "St. Patrick’s of the Woods" (1854)*

February 19^th: William Drennan, "Glendalloch" (1815)*; John & Michael Banim, "Chaunt of the Cholera" (1831)!; Denis Florence MacCarthy, "A Walk by the Bay of Dublin" (1850)*

March 11^th: The Last Man (cont.); James Clarence Mangan, "The Lovely Land" and "The Warning Voice" (1846)*; Jane Wilde, "The Famine Year" and "Ruins" (1864)*

March 18^th: Matthew Lewis, "The Anaconda" (1808); Denis Florence MacCarthy, "Afghanistan" (1850)*

March 25^th: Morgan, The Missionary (1811)

• Canuel, Mark. "Acts, Rules, and The Last Man." Nineteenth-Century Literature 53 (1998): 147-70.
• Durant, Jack D. "Sheridan and Language." Sheridan Studies. Ed. James Morwood and David Crane. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 96-113.
• Foster, John Wilson. "The Topographical Tradition in Anglo-Irish Poetry," Colonial Consequences: Essays in Irish Literature and Culture. Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1991.
• Harris, Susan Cannon. "Mixed Marriage: Sheridan, Macklin, and the Hybrid Audience." Players, Playwrights, Playhouses: Investigating Performance, 1660-1800. Ed. Michael Cordner and Peter Holland. New York: Macmillan Palgrave, 2007.
• Jones, Robert W. "Sheridan and the Theatre of Patriotism: Staging Dissent during the War for America." Eighteenth-Century Life 26 (2002): 24-45.
• Lew, Joseph. "The Plague of Imperial Desire: Montesquieu, Gibbon, Brougham, and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man." Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830. Ed. Tim Fulford and Peter J. Kitson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 261-78.
• Morash, Christopher. Writing the Irish Famine. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1995.
• Myers, Mitzi. "Goring John Bull: Maria Edgeworth’s Hibernian High Jinks versus the Imperialist Imaginary." Cutting Edges: Postmodern Critical Essays on Eighteenth-Century Satire, edited by James E. Gill. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1995. 367-94.
• O’Connor, Maureen. "Sydney Owenson’s Wild Indian Girl." European Legacy 10 (2005): 21-28.
• Rajan, Balachandra. "Feminizing the Feminine: Early Women Writers on India." Under Western Eyes: India from Milton to Macaulay. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1999. 118–38.
• Siegel, Sandra F. "Transforming Conventions: The Trope of Decorum and Thomas Sheridan’s Captain O’Blunder." Literary Imagination, Ancient & Modern: Essays in Honor of David Grene. Ed. Todd Breyfogle. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. 228-42.
• Sussman, Charlotte. "Islanded in the World': Cultural Memory and Human Mobility in The Last Man." PMLA 118 (2003): 286-301.
• Waters, John. "Topographical Poetry and the Politics of Culture in Ireland, 1772-1820." Romantic Generations: Essays in Honor of Robert F. Gleckner. Ed. Ghislaine McDayter, Guinn Batten, and Barry Milligan. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2001. 221-44.