Irish Literature in Transition, 1780-1830
Subtitle: Volume 2
Publisher: University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations
Published: 2020
Language: eng
Number of pages: 456
ISBN-13: 9781108492980
Description: "There can be few places better to begin to trace the fluid entanglements of literature and history circa 1800 than with the case of Robert Emmet's rebellion. Despite the suppression of the United Irish rebellion and the passing of the Act of Union, the legacies of violence continued into the new century. While some emigrated to the United States and to Europe, many of the leading United Irishmen were removed from Dublin in 1799 and imprisoned in Fort George, a Jacobite-era artillery fortification near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. Built after the Battle of Culloden, with impregnable walls overlooking the Moray Firth, Fort George was a place of prolonged, 'bitter and vengeful' confinement for convicted United Irishmen including Thomas Russell, Arthur O'Connor and Thomas Addis Emmet.60 These men maintained connections with the remaining member of the United Irish society, including Robert Emmet, who rendezvoused with his brother Thomas Addis Emmet, sisterin- law and their children in Amsterdam and instigated plans to set up headquarters in Brussels. French support was not forthcoming, however: Napoleon Bonaparte had just sent a fleet to San Domingo in an effort to regain French control of the Caribbean colony and the temporary peace between Britain and France signaled by signing of the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 came as a further blow to United Irish hopes. Robert Emmet nonetheless went on to lead a small group of United Irishmen to rebellion in Dublin in July 1803. Thinking more about this quickly defeated effort - a failed but 'rhetorically resonant' event - can help us to analyse the contours of a body of writing 60 Marianne Elliott, Robert Emmet: the Making of a Legend (London: Profile, 2003), p. 27. 49 in transition.61 Once captured, Emmet was found guilty of treason and condemned to public execution. His 'staccato' speech from the dock, with its urgent appeal to a future 'when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth' became a writ of Irish romantic nationalism (though debate continues as to its textual provenance).62 Seamus Deane suggests that the very grammar of Emmet's speech - in particular its use of the future perfect tense - inscribes an insistent openness to the future that constitutes an essential aspect of romantic nationalism. 'That appeal to the future', remarks Kevin Whelan, 'is what sent Emmet cascading down the echo chamber of Irish history.'63 For Irish literature, however, it is a mistake to position the events of 1803 at the opening point of a hollow enclosure. Composed of reflections, relays and reverberations, echoes create complex resonances and patterns. Emmet 'shared a language with the English Romantic poets' and his story quickly inspired works by Robert Southey and Percy Bysshe Shelley as well as remarks by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.64 Poems including Shelley's 'On Robert Emmet's Tomb' and Moore's 'Oh Breathe Not his Name!' imagine Emmet not as dead or defeated but rather as a wandering spirit, waiting in silence"--