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Spain in Irish Literature 1789-1850: An Approach to a Minor Representation

By Asier Altuna-García de Salazar

IV

This need for an Irish 'narrative of identity' is at the centre of the politics of characterisation of most of the authors proposed here; and any narrative of identity aims at constructing memory. The re-creation of memory is a key element in the structuring process of an 'imagined community', to use Benedict Anderson's term; memory is part of the constitution of an Anglo-Irish subjectivity that negotiated between an ever-growing Irish tradition, principally Catholic, and the powerful influence of the British Anglican tradition.

In the case of the Anglo-Irish writing proper, the lack of heroes whom they could claim as their own highlights the need for a re-awakening of the Irish, English or Spanish pasts striving to create an Anglo-Irish present, deprived of all these former figures. The constant search by Anglo-Irish authors for Spanish characters reflects the discontinuity in much Anglo-Irish writing, which contrasts with the Spanish literary and historical discourse.

Through the 'anecdotal' analysis of Spain and Spanish references in Irish literature between 1789 and 1850, the need to question the literary canon is also addressed. The use of the new historicist 'anecdote' and the 'thick description' would enable the future researcher and student of the period to study those 'cracks' within the institution of the literary canon. We suggest that, through this proposed approach to new historicist synchronic 'cultural cuts', we also refer to the diachronic character of the Irish canon. It is through the study of Spain and Spanish references in Irish literature between 1789 and 1850 that we would be able to rescue these works from 'canonical silence' and critical relegation.

During the period between 1789 and 1850, the approach to Spain and Spanish references in Irish literature should be broad and multi-faceted. The use of Spain and Spanish culture has as its aim the establishment of a mirror in which the Irish discourse is reflected and 'furnished'. W. J. McCormack contends that 'Anglo-Irish literature [and I would add the Catholic Irish literature of the period] is given an excessive stability by the acceptance of tradition as accumulated and accumulating succession' (McCormack 1994: 12). This new historicist approach to the representation of Spain and Spanish references in Irish literature between 1789 and 1850 proposed here, and how this representation is used to reflect the Irish discourse of the period, is our contribution to the Irish literary critical tradition, which is also an 'accumulated and accumulating succession'.    

 

Asier Altuna-García de Salazar

 

Notes

[1] I owe great thanks to the Department of Education Eusko Jaurlaritza-Gobierno Vasco for postdoctoral fellowship support, BFI05.R2.40, which made this research possible.

[2] For details of publication and circulation of some of the works proposed here see A Guide to Irish Fiction, 1650-1900, Rolf Loeber and Magda Loeber (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006).

[3] See Asier Altuna-García de Salazar, Spain in Anglo-Irish Literature 1789-1850 (Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, 2001), PhD Thesis UMI publication AAT3056702.

[4] Charles Townshend contends that 'the bloody mayhem of the 1798 United Irish rebellion, and the ferocious Protestant mobilization to suppress it, convinced Prime Minister William Pitt that political reform in Ireland - essentially, the granting of civil rights to Catholics - was vital, and that the Protestants who controlled the Irish parliament would never carry it out. Only unification, merging the Irish into the British parliament, could open up the possibility of 'Catholic Emancipation'. Charles Townshend, Ireland. The 20th Century (London: Arnold, 1998), p. 3. 

[5] See Lennon's seminal and illuminating study, Joseph Lennon, Irish Orientalism: a Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press: 2004).  

References

- Altuna-García de Salazar, Asier, Spain in Anglo-Irish Literature 1789-1850 (Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, 2001), PhD Thesis UMI publication AAT3056702.

- Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan (ed.), The Ballad Poetry of Ireland [1845], A Facsimile Reproduction of the Fortieth Edition (1869) with an Introduction by R.N. Leonard (New York: Delmar, 1973).

- Gallagher, Catherine and Stephen Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).

- Gallagher, Catherine, 'Marxism and the New Historicism' in The New Historicism  H. Aram Veeser (ed.) (London:Routledge, 1989), pp. 37-48.

- Lennon, Joseph, Irish Orientalism: a Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press: 2004).

- Loeber, Rolf and Magda Loeber, A Guide to Irish Fiction, 1650-1900 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006).

- McCormack, W.J., From Burke to Beckett. Ascendancy Tradition and Betrayal in Literary History (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994).

- Rafroidi, Patrick, Irish Literature in English. The Romantic Period (1789-1850), Vol. I (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1980).

- Said, Edward, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).

- Townshend, Charles, Ireland. The 20th Century (London: Arnold, 1998).


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Copyright © Society for Irish Latin American Studies, 2007

Online published: 31 August 2007
Edited: 07 May 2009

Citation:
Altuna, Asier, 'Spain in Irish Literature 1789-1850: An Approach to a Minor Representation
' in Irish Migration Studies in Latin America, 5:2 (July 2007), pp. 96-101. (www.irlandeses.org), accessed .


 

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