Maria Edgeworth's Irish Writing Language, History, Politics [Hardcover]

Edgeworth is regarded as a pioneer in the development of the regional novel and the use of vernacular language. This study investigates her attitudes towards language and regionalism. It shows, by a detailed discussion of her major Irish texts - Castle Rackrent , Essay on Irish Bulls , Ennui , The Absentee and Ormond - how her intellectual 'Lunar' background, and her life in Ireland during the momentous years of the Union is reflected in the form and language of her writing.Introduction - PART 1: EDGEWORTH AND LANGUAGE - 'The Local and the Temporary': Maria Edgeworth's Regional Writing - Lunar Values and the Union: Factors Drawing Edgeworth to Regional Language and Regional Narrative - An Essay on Irish Bulls - PART 2: THE IRISH TALES - Castle Rackrent: The Innocent Text, The Innocent Voice - Formal and Linguistic Features in the Later Irish Tales - 'Let Us Dare To Be Ourselves': A Reading of Ennui - The Voice of Truth: A Reading of The Absentee - King Or No King: A Reading of Ormond - Notes - Index

'Brian Hollingworth's Maria Edgeworth's Irish Writing is useful and timely as a sustained study of Edgeworth which surveys her writing on Ireland and allows for a reassessment of how Edgeworth can be understood in Irish terms. In pinning down some of the major linguistic strands of Edgeworth's thought and finding unique ways of relating them to an Irish context, Hollingworth has made a very valuable contribution to future understandings of the oral and the textual, the linguistic and the written, the dominant and the subordinate as constituted by Maria Edgeworth.' - Colin Graham, Irish Studies Review

BRIAN HOLLINGWORTH recently retired as Head of English at Derby University. He is now teaching part-time and writing. A graduate of Manchester University, he previously taught at Methodist College, Hong Kong, and Leeds University. His publications include Songs of the People, a critical anthology of Lancashire dialect poetry of the nineteenth century and paplS.