Charles Robert Maturin and the haunting of Irish romantic fiction / Christina Morin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Morin, Christina.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Maturin, Charles Robert, 1780-1824--Criticism and interpretation.

Maturin, Charles Robert.

Maturin, Charles Robert, 1780-1824.

Romanticism--Ireland.

Romanticism.

Gothic revival (Literature)--Ireland.

Gothic revival (Literature).

Criticism and interpretation.

Ireland.

Physical Description:

x, 210 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Manchester ; New York : Manchester University Press, 2011.

Summary:

Poignantly describing himself as 'a disappointed author' in his own lifetime, Charles Robert Maturin (1780-1824) acutely foresaw the cultural amnesia into which he would fall after his death in 1824. Remembered today for his Gothic masterpiece, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), Maturin has remained largely marginalised in critical attention to Irish Romantic literature.

In this book - the most complete and up-to-date reading of Maturin and his novels available today - Christina Morin reinstates Maturin as a key figure in the development of Irish Romantic fiction. Working from Jacques Derrida's influential theory on ghosts, this book counters the traditional understanding of early-nineteenth century Irish fiction as constituted by national and regional literary forms comprised of totalising narratives of reconciliation and closure. Instead, tracing the continued emergence of an atavistic past - cultural, social, and political - in the novels of Maturin and his contemporaries, this book reveals the Gothic mode's persistent spectral influence in Ireland throughout the Romantic period. In particular, it lucidly demonstrates the manner in which Maturin's six novels dramatically underscore the haunted and haunting nature of Irish literary production in the wake of Anglo-Irish Union (1801). Correspondingly, it proposes a new paradigm by which to understand Irish Romantic fiction while also exhorting renewed attention from academics and enthusiasts alike to an author all but forgotten, despite his central influence on literature from the early-nineteenth century to today, for far too long. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Reviving Maturin: the life and works 21

2 Communing with the dead: the medium and media of Fatal revenge 33

3 Conjuring Glorvina: The wild Irish boy and the national tale 58

4 Witnessing the past: the textual ruins of The Milesian chief 83

5 Narrating history: the burden of words in Women; or pour et contie 106

6 Paratextual possession: rereading Melmoth the wanderer 129

7 Rethinking Scott's revolution: The Albigenses as historical novel 154.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [189]-201) and index.

ISBN:

9780719085321

0719085322

OCLC:

748328696