Forging Ireland

German Travel Writing from 1785-1850
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-3-86821-771-1
Verlag: WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier

Buch, Englisch, Band 10, 332 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 646 g

Reihe: IRISH-GERMAN STUDIES

How did late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century German-speaking visitors to Ireland view the country and its people? What shaped their perceptions? How did they make sense of what they experienced? This book considers these questions by investigating the travel narratives of circa thirty German-speaking visitors to Ireland between 1785-1850. The study shows how aesthetic theories of the sublime and the picturesque, the trope of the savage, as well as racial, colonial and national discourses informed observers’ views of Ireland and the Irish. Yet, although authors employed similar conceptual frameworks, tropes and stereotypes, the study outlines how these could be employed in very different ways: authors’ attempts to make sense of Ireland reveal predispositions, (mis)appropriations and specific agendas which both informed and curtailed explainability. In outlining German observers’ construction of the Irish Volk , Volkscharakter and Volksgeist , this study reveals how a number of discourses combined to forge an Irish collective, no matter how disparate that collective might be. With the emergence of the nation state as a means for political organisation around 1800, this book then investigates if a potential Irish nation is ‘imagined’ into being through outside observation.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wheatley, Leesa

Inhaltsverzeichnis

ContentsAcknowledgements          ix Abbreviations          xi 1 Visiting Ireland: Introduction          1 2 Framing Ireland          15 2.1 Picturesque Ireland: Compositional Techniques and Subject Matter          19 2.2 Imperfection, Improvement, Perfection          37 2.3 The Irish Sublime and Ossian          47 3 Populating the Picture          59 3.1 Visualising the Irish People          61 3.2 Breaking the Idyll          81 3.3 Aesthetics and the City          88 4 Constructing the Individual          99 4.1 Savages both Noble and Ignoble          102 4.2 Savages, Social Inequality and Middle-Class Sensibilities          105 4.3 Colonial Configurations of the Savage          116 4.4 The Violent Savage 124 4.5 Changing Perceptions of the Savage          126 5 Constructing the Collective          134 5.1 An Irish Nationalcharakter , the Protestant Nation and the Union          140 5.2 The ‘Discovery’ of Irish Folk Culture          151 5.3 Folk Culture and an Irish Nationalcharakter          160 5.4 Folk Culture and the ‘Wild Irish’          167 6 Racialising the Irish          173 6.1 Celtic and Germanic Ireland          176 6.2 Physiognomy and Phrenology          182 6.3 Celtic and Germanic Character          184 6.4 Race and Religion 190 6.5 A Celtic Irish Volksgeist          196 7 Changing Perspectives: The Emergence of Vormärz Rhetoric          208 7.1 Reconfigured Comparisons          213 7.2 A Freedom-Loving Oppressed People          222 7.3 Signs of Cultural and Moral Improvement          226 7.4 The Famine Years          230 8 Explaining Ireland          239 8.1 Landlordism          239 8.2 Union, Emancipation, Repeal: Solutions Offered          243 9 Knowing Ireland? Conclusion          269 10 Biographies of Authors          274 List of Portraits          291 11 Bibliography          293 11.1 Primary Literature          293 11.2 Secondary Literature          300 Index          313