Book contents
- Irish Literature in Transition, 1830–1880
- Irish Literature in Transition
- Irish Literature in Transition, 1830–1880
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Series Preface
- General Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Contexts and Contents: Politics and Periodicals
- Part II Ireland and the Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Part III From the Four Nations to the Globalising Irish
- Chapter 8 England and Ireland, Tory and Whig: Thackeray, Trollope, Arnold
- Chapter 9 Imperial Minds: Irish Writers and Empire in the Nineteenth Century – Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Moore, Charles Lever and Kim
- Chapter 10 An Exiled History: Young Ireland from Mitchel to O’Leary
- Chapter 11 US Nation Building and the Irish-American Novel, 1830–1880
- Part IV The Languages of Literature
- Index
Chapter 11 - US Nation Building and the Irish-American Novel, 1830–1880
from Part III - From the Four Nations to the Globalising Irish
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2020
- Irish Literature in Transition, 1830–1880
- Irish Literature in Transition
- Irish Literature in Transition, 1830–1880
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Series Preface
- General Acknowledgements
- Acknowledgements
- Part I Contexts and Contents: Politics and Periodicals
- Part II Ireland and the Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Part III From the Four Nations to the Globalising Irish
- Chapter 8 England and Ireland, Tory and Whig: Thackeray, Trollope, Arnold
- Chapter 9 Imperial Minds: Irish Writers and Empire in the Nineteenth Century – Charles Gavan Duffy, Thomas Moore, Charles Lever and Kim
- Chapter 10 An Exiled History: Young Ireland from Mitchel to O’Leary
- Chapter 11 US Nation Building and the Irish-American Novel, 1830–1880
- Part IV The Languages of Literature
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines the role played by Irish American Catholic novels published between 1830 and 1880 in the US nation-building project. The novels of what Charles Fanning has labelled the ‘Famine Generation’ dominate the period in question. Famine Irish American literature has been considered insular, aimed primarily at keeping alienated immigrant readers within the Catholic flock. The literature’s US nation-building role has been ignored by Americanists and Irish studies scholars alike. This chapter strives to correct that anomaly. Situating Famine Irish writing firmly within the unfolding narrative of the US racial state, it shows the ways in which the Famine generation of Irish American writers performed crucial ideological functions on behalf of the US state.
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- Irish Literature in Transition, 1830–1880 , pp. 179 - 196Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020