Literary networks and dissenting print culture in Romantic-period Ireland

Author / Creator

Orr, Jennifer (Writer on poetry), author

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Summary

"Two centuries before Seamus Heaney and the 'Ulster revival', literature in the north of Ireland enjoyed an unprecedented explosion of activity in line with the revolutionary fervour that swept Eur...

"Two centuries before Seamus Heaney and the 'Ulster revival', literature in the north of Ireland enjoyed an unprecedented explosion of activity in line with the revolutionary fervour that swept Europe in the period 1788-1815. This study uncovers a number of patriotic and sociable projects informed by the culture of Dissent which included: radical republican politics, conservative national epic, theological pamphleteering and patriotic social initiatives. Aspiring poets, fired by the democratic atmosphere of the 1790s and their religious Dissenting upbringings, launched a twofold strategy of publishing by subscription through public and private sociability (in cottage gatherings, book clubs and Enlightenment republican societies like the United Irishmen) and through correspondence and verse epistle that was conducted through the Belfast press. This study also breaks new ground in its examination of the creation of a new 'Ulster' identity under the Anglo-Irish Union of 1801. The debate which arose from questions of identity in a liminal cultural space stimulated, rather than stultified, literary productivity, heightening the importance of the Ulster poet as a distinctive Romantic literary identity"--

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