Forging Ireland

ContentsAcknowledgements ix

Abbreviations xi

1 Visiting Ireland: Introduction 1

2 Framing Ireland 15
2.1 Picturesque Ireland: Compositional Techniques and Subject Matter 19
2.2 Imperfection, Improvement, Perfection 37
2.3 The Irish Sublime and Ossian 47

3 Populating the Picture 59
3.1 Visualising the Irish People 61
3.2 Breaking the Idyll 81
3.3 Aesthetics and the City 88

4 Constructing the Individual 99
4.1 Savages both Noble and Ignoble 102
4.2 Savages, Social Inequality and Middle-Class Sensibilities 105
4.3 Colonial Configurations of the Savage 116
4.4 The Violent Savage 124
4.5 Changing Perceptions of the Savage 126

5 Constructing the Collective 134
5.1 An Irish Nationalcharakter, the Protestant Nation and the Union 140
5.2 The 'Discovery' of Irish Folk Culture 151
5.3 Folk Culture and an Irish Nationalcharakter 160
5.4 Folk Culture and the 'Wild Irish' 167

6 Racialising the Irish 173
6.1 Celtic and Germanic Ireland 176
6.2 Physiognomy and Phrenology 182
6.3 Celticand Germanic Character 184
6.4 Race and Religion 190
6.5 A Celtic Irish Volksgeist 196

7 Changing Perspectives:
The Emergence of
Vormärz Rhetoric 208
7.1 Reconfigured Comparisons 213
7.2 A Freedom-Loving Oppressed People 222
7.3 Signs of Cultural and Moral Improvement 226
7.4 The Famine Years 230

8 Explaining Ireland 239
8.1 Landlordism 239
8.2 Union, Emancipation, Repeal: Solutions Offered 243

9 Knowing Ireland? Conclusion 269

10 Biographies of Authors 274
List of Portraits 291

11 Bibliography 293
11.1 Primary Literature 293
11.2 Secondary Literature 300

Index 313