TOPIC 2
Nineteenth Century Narrative
This is a century of Narrative and Novel for excellence. Only the Anglo-Irish wrote
literature for the reason that they are the only ones who had studies but progressively
things going to change and it appears the first Irish-Irish writers.
The Regional Novel: Maria Edgeworth and William Carleton
It appears a realistic narrative and romantic kind of literature. Realistic narrative in a
great deal of Irish topics, it takes place between 1830 and 1840 and it is called
“Regional Novel” because Ireland is called Region.
There were 2 important writers: Maria Edgeworth and William Carleton.
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth was born in 1768 and she died in 1849. She was a member of
Ascendances important Anglo-Irish noblemen family in Ireland. She wrote several
novels with Irish questions and others not. Her public was mainly English but also
throughout Europe. She was really new first novel had an Irish theme and it was entitled
“Castle Rackrent” (1800). Basically, it tells the story of Rackrent family, these are
Anglo-Irish landowners, and they are very healthy family. It tells the story of four
generations who are represented by one lord each one.
The problem is that they are not very good with the money and they are very lacking
with their properties, so they suffer a downhill. Finally, they lost the Castle due to the
lack of responsibility. The book is an indictment against Anglo-Irish landowners and
their responsibilities. It is very solemn. The author is great in that sense. She is very
influential in Walter Scott or Jane Austen for example. This novel is very innovative for
2 reasons: on the one hand, a woman published a novel of Anglo-Irish problems being
herself Anglo-Irish and on the other hand, she writes with a full of energy, too solemn,
full of vigor, it is an indictment but it is funny at the same time. There is another
interesting point: the perspective because it determines the point of view in which novel
will be related. In the novel, it is omniscient narrative voice and the narrative voice tells
the reader everything it knows. It uses the 3rd person (and Jane Austen uses so much
also). Maria Edgeworth told the story by of an old man who lives in the family called
Thady Quirk (an Irish-Irish man). She has to put herself in the perspective of the
narrator which was completely different at her perspective. Thady Quirk was very
clever, a marvellous character to tell the story.
Moreover, she also uses the Hiberna English (which is called in this way because
Ireland is called “The land of winter”, and that land is Hibernia). It appears at lexical,
syntactical and phonetical level.
She uses all the characteristics discourse of an Irish-Irish person and one of them is
Hibernia English. She was very well-known in the European continent and was influent
in Russian writers or writers as Jane Austen. The novel also is prophetic: the family
loses their possessions and this changes hands to Thady Quirk’s son, Jason Quirk. This
would happen several decades later, when Irish-Irish farmers bought some small pieces
of land.
“The Absentee” (1812) and “Ormond” (1817) deals with the problem of exploitation of
lands. The agents were in charge of the administration of lands and one of their charges
was recollect the rents. They deal also with the problems of those times. The plot is
some picaresque. A young man travels around several places. It is a life journey and he
knows things about the life. He goes back to Ireland as a Christian person. He was an
Anglo-Irish man who is responsible, very able to handle his possessions, a great
administrator. That is basically a didactic novel as the same happens in the other novels.
Maria Edgeworth has become much more didactics and it means that characters are
instruments that she wants to learn to the audience. Her first novel is the best because it
