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Fragmented Histories: 1798 And The Irish National Tale, Colleen Booker Halverson

Theses and Dissertations

The 1798 rebellion radically transformed the social and political landscape of Ireland, but it would also have a dramatic impact on Anglo-Irish authors writing in its grim aftermath. Numerous critics have characterized the early Irish novel as "unstable" and suggest that the interruptions, the inverted, overlapping narratives, and the heteroglossia that pervade these novels are a by-product of these authors' tumultuous times. These Anglo-Irish novels may appear as "unstable" texts, but their "instability," I would argue, is a strategic maneuver, a critique of the idea of "stability" itself as it is presented through the "civilizing," modernizing mission of imperialism. When …