Shakespeare and Irish Romanticism.

This project will fill gaps in scholarship on Irish Romanticism and on the international reception of Shakespeare by analysing the use made of Shakespeare by three key Irish Romantic writers. Shakespearean traces in the works of Lady Morgan, Charles Robert Maturin and James Clarence Mangan will be categorized through applications of intertextual theory. Their significance will then be assessed through comparisons with cognate modes of Shakespearean intertextuality that have already been charted: the English Romantic embrace of Shakespearean influence, the appropriation of Shakespeares work by Romantic cultural nationalists in Europe, the use of Shakespearean plots in Gothic fiction, postcolonial rewritings of Shakespeare, and more recent Irish writers ambivalent attitude towards the central icon of the English canon. The project will investigate connections between Morgans, Maturins and Mangans uses of Shakespeare and their different ideological positions within Irish society, as well as their different reliances on Irish and/or British publication channels. It will thus provide new approaches to ongoing critical debates on Irish Romanticisms structural and ideological relation to both British Romanticism and Irish nationalism, and it will explore Shakespearean intertextuality in a hitherto neglected spatio-temporal context.

Keywords:Shakespeare, Irish nationalism, Irish Romanticism, Intertextuality

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies, Theory and methodology of language studies, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Theory and methodology of literary studies, Other languages and literary studies