| Domain | Article in Journal |
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| Title | "Emily Lawless's 'Maelcho' and the crisis of the imperial romance" |
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| Author | Maume, Patrick |
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| Journal Title | Éire-Ireland |
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| Journal Vol | 41 |
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| Journal Vol Issue | 41:3 & 4 |
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| Publication Date | 2006 |
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| Start-End Page | 245 — 266 |
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| Number Of Pages | 22 p. |
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| Era Covered | 1880 — 1914 |
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| Language | English |
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| ISSN | 00132683 |
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| Subject Classification |
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| Person As Subject | Lawless, Emily, 1845-1913 |
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| Country | Ireland |
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| Notes | Discusses the (landed) background and career of the late Victorian novelist Emily Lawless, with particular reference to her historical novel MAELCHO about the sixteenth-century Desmond rebellion. Argues that while the rebels' verbosity, divisions and irresponsibility are intended as a critique of contemporary Irish nationalism, the novel's semi-nihilistic descriptions of massacre by government forces and the mass starvation of civilians reflect contemporary moral ambivalence about the methods of Empire and memories of the Irish Famine which Lawless had heard in her youth (and discusses in other writings). In moving its centre of attention from a young English adventurer on the make to a dispossessed and increasingly senile Gaelic poet-warrior, the novel subverts the imperial Bildungsroman derived from Scott and Henty, whose morally upright adolescent protagonists achieve integrity, maturity and success by abandoning youthful fascination with primitive societi es for the less flashy but solid and triumphant values of empire. |
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| Rights | All rights to IHO record reserved. |
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