Title

Bull, cock, and colony in the Anglo-Irish novels of Maria Edgeworth and Laurence Sterne

Date of Award

8-2002

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

Advisor(s)

Dympna Callaghan

Keywords

Anglo-Irish, Novels, Maria Edgeworth, Bull, Laurence Sterne

Subject Categories

Literature in English, British Isles

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on a critical verbal form known as the Irish bull in Maria Edgeworth's four Irish novels, Castle Rackrent, The Absentee, Ennui, and Ormond , and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy . Anything short of common sense within eighteenth-century colonial Ireland is a bull, especially an Irishman's blunder. As the antithesis of common logic, it signifies pejoratively as a quintessential Irish difference, and yet it can challenge the dominant rationality of the British empire. Bulls provide Edgeworth and Sterne an authority to speak of Ireland from the skeptical position of the Anglo-Irish colonial. Their literary projects ultimately come down to the issue of Anglo-Irish political legitimacy within the imperial project to control Irish land, people, resources, and historical representation.

This study establishes an Anglo-Irish context to these novels, details the bull's history as a colonial cultural form, and explains the political patterning of relations among the subjects of England and Ireland within Edgeworth's and Sterne's bulls.

Access

Surface provides description only. Full text is available to ProQuest subscribers. Ask your Librarian for assistance.

http://libezproxy.syr.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=764855241&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=3739&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS