Research Catalog

Title

Nationalism and desire in early historical fiction / Ian Dennis.

Author

Dennis, Ian, 1952-

Publication

New York : St. Martin's Press, 1997.

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Holdings

Details

Description

ix, 203 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

• A young Englishman travels in a half-known and neglected country, which he has always been taught to look down on. Here, however, he discovers a fullness and authenticity that shows him his own emptiness and artificiality. He falls in love with a woman who seems to embody this romantic land. After complications they marry, and he is a new man.
• When such a 'National Tale' is told from the perspective of the Englishman, but written by a native of Ireland, Scotland or the new United States, the operation of what Rene Girard has called triangular or imitative desire can clearly be discerned.
• If the foreigner desires the woman through her nation, or vice-versa, the homeland is made desirable to its own inhabitants through the imagined desires of this representative of the national 'Other', the powerful and inevitable model for nationhood itself, namely England.
• Ian Dennis reassesses a sequence of early-nineteenth-century fictions by Jane Porter, Sydney Owenson, Sir Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper in which a portrayal of the desiring 'Other' is used to generate aspirations for national identity, but also, in the greatest works of Scott, to acknowledge and critique such processes.
• Nationalism in historical fiction is analysed in relation to Girardian theory of desire for the first time here, offering fresh insights into one of the most popular and influential literary genres.

Subjects

• Desire in literature
• Scotland > In literature
• Porter, Jane, 1776-1850 > Scottish chiefs
• English fiction > 19th century > History and criticism
• Historical fiction, American > History and criticism
• Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851 > Criticism and interpretation
• United States > In literature
• Scott, Walter, 1771-1832 > Fictional works
• Nationalism in literature
• Morgan, Lady (Sydney), 1783-1859 > Wild Irish girl
• Ireland > In literature
• Historical fiction, English > History and criticism

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Historical Fiction, Nationalism, Desire -- 'French Triangles' -- 1. 'What a Land is This!' - The Pre-Oedipal Nation -- 2. English Boys and Colonial Girls -- 3. The Waverley Solution -- 4. Radical Fathers and Moderate Sons.

ISBN

0312172443 (cloth)

LCCN

96044852

OCLC

• 35657960
• ocm35657960

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries