Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W2045402852> ?p ?o ?g. }
- W2045402852 endingPage "57" @default.
- W2045402852 startingPage "31" @default.
- W2045402852 abstract "Text and Textile in Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl Julie Donovan (bio) Over the last decade and a half, Sydney Owenson’s 1806 novel The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale has attracted a substantial body of criticism—more than any other item in Owenson’s oeuvre.1 While acknowledging this work and the possible peril of wild Irish girl fatigue, this essay intervenes in the current array of readings by demonstrating how Owenson’s text reflects her materialist thinking. Though she often presented herself and was viewed as the epitome of a hopelessly frothy Romantic nationalism communing with the spirit of the Celts, Sydney Owenson was a serious materialist.2 [End Page 31] She traced this philosophical bias to the precocity of her younger years: “before I was fourteen,” she wrote in her autobiographical memoir, The Book of the Boudoir (1829), “I had read Locke (which chance threw my way in a parlour window).” Maintaining that “No sophism, however difficult of detection, can supersede the sensible conviction of external reality,” Owenson, with cheerful derision, challenged the validity of Idealism over matter expounded by the Irish philosopher George Berkeley: “Berkeley himself did not run his head against a post” (1.47; 1.III).3 This preoccupation with materialism manifests itself in The Wild Irish Girl as Owenson’s narrative interweaves Irish history with the physical world of material objects—primarily textiles and clothing. Sustained tropes around such items in Owenson’s third work of fiction become instrumental in reupholstering Ireland’s degraded national image, providing the means for a sophisticated re-appropriation of Britain’s image of its own imperial might and Ireland’s backwardness. Clothing and textiles provide a kind of master trope for such a re-appropriation and transformation, not only because Owenson interpreted them as intrinsic to conceptions of Irish corporeality and subjecthood, but also because of their very material nature—their ability to be circulated and exchanged, re-stitched and refashioned. What [End Page 32] enthralls Owenson about those material items is not so much their physicality, but their workability—the ways in which they are malleable, portable, and transformable—workable as much by maverick Irish writers as by British imperialists. In exploring materiality in The Wild Irish Girl, Owenson ranges widely, but she begins from two starting points. She uses her country’s historical prowess in textile manufacture to demonstrate how Ireland could take its place as part of Europe and the world rather than linger as a lesser dominion of Britain. Additionally, she takes as a context resistance against inequitable restraints on Ireland’s textile industry. As voiced by Jonathan Swift through to the Earl of Charlemont, leader of the Irish Volunteers in 1782, such resistance commandeered campaigns to buy Irish textiles and to wear domestically produced clothes. Always cognizant of the evolving historical struggles of Ireland’s textile trade, Owenson reflects on colonial proscriptions against “native” attire, romantically reinvents ideas of ancient dress associated with rebellion, and interprets antiquarian lore through clothing. As a post–1800 Act of Union novel inhabiting a world in which strictures on free trade have been lifted, The Wild Irish Girl focuses attention more on cultural than economic concerns. Owenson, however, perceived points of contiguity between the two, a perception exemplified most dramatically by her deployment of clothing and textiles to purvey the Celtic chic of The Wild Irish Girl’s heroine, Glorvina. In adopting that character’s Celtic dress as part of a self dramatization after writing the national tale, Owenson fused her public self-fashioning with her encouragement of the Irish textile industry. The Wild Irish Girl not only thematizes the task of re-working materials, it concretely performs that task, weaving the old—voluminous footnotes and intertexts—with a new story line. These Owenson incorporates into her narrative not to channel British cultural authority, but rather to critique and transform it, as she interlaces historical and social context for tropes around textiles and clothing with character development in her narrative—notably the re-education of the novel’s protagonist, Horatio Mortimer—whom, unlike Berkeley, she forces to “run his head against a post” of tangible Irish life. Refuting accusations that Owenson’s copious..." @default.
- W2045402852 created "2016-06-24" @default.
- W2045402852 creator A5061718994 @default.
- W2045402852 date "2008-01-01" @default.
- W2045402852 modified "2023-10-17" @default.
- W2045402852 title "Text and Textile in Sydney Owenson’s <i>The Wild Irish Girl</i>" @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1489954923 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1499605464 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1521247788 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1526194892 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1533200881 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1534620183 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1536632043 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1545258556 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1547200745 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1555510574 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1557718095 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1559935725 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1561407606 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1574198605 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1595068960 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1605167372 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1616353390 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1848904025 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W1991013920 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2008498528 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2016754747 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2043824254 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2059656386 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2077175742 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2078302064 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2084059868 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2096753285 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2160665974 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2322519414 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2333566979 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2334998541 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2500710029 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2587968109 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2588974729 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W2895133819 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W301697820 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W3183486973 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W364378876 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W563444602 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W572968844 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W596931372 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W602516320 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W609166272 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W609540731 @default.
- W2045402852 cites W644895057 @default.
- W2045402852 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/eir.0.0020" @default.
- W2045402852 hasPublicationYear "2008" @default.
- W2045402852 type Work @default.
- W2045402852 sameAs 2045402852 @default.
- W2045402852 citedByCount "2" @default.
- W2045402852 countsByYear W20454028522018 @default.
- W2045402852 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
- W2045402852 hasAuthorship W2045402852A5061718994 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C111472728 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C138496976 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C138885662 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C144218379 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C15744967 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C177897776 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C199033989 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C2778047097 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C2780623531 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C41895202 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C517673595 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C52119013 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C111472728 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C124952713 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C138496976 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C138885662 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C142362112 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C144218379 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C15744967 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C177897776 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C199033989 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C2778047097 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C2780623531 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C41895202 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C517673595 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C52119013 @default.
- W2045402852 hasConceptScore W2045402852C95457728 @default.
- W2045402852 hasIssue "3-4" @default.
- W2045402852 hasLocation W20454028521 @default.
- W2045402852 hasOpenAccess W2045402852 @default.
- W2045402852 hasPrimaryLocation W20454028521 @default.
- W2045402852 hasRelatedWork W2045402852 @default.
- W2045402852 hasRelatedWork W2496486279 @default.
- W2045402852 hasRelatedWork W2587037208 @default.
- W2045402852 hasRelatedWork W2748952813 @default.
- W2045402852 hasRelatedWork W2899084033 @default.