Travel narratives of the Irish famine : politics, tourism, and scandal, 1845-1853 /
Ireland's Great Famine generated nineteenth-century western Europe's most devastating social crisis, a crisis that created enormous and transformational upheaval. In Travel Narratives of the Irish Famine: Politics, Tourism, and Scandal, 1845-1853, author Catherine Nealy Judd proposes that...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford, UK ; New York :
Peter Lang,
[2020]
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| Series: | Reimagining Ireland ;
v. 98. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Ireland's Great Famine generated nineteenth-century western Europe's most devastating social crisis, a crisis that created enormous and transformational upheaval. In Travel Narratives of the Irish Famine: Politics, Tourism, and Scandal, 1845-1853, author Catherine Nealy Judd proposes that a new literary genre emerged from the crucible of the Great Famine, that is, the Irish famine travelogue. In her keenly argued and thoroughly researched book, Judd contends that previous scrutiny of famine travel narratives has been overly broad, peripheral or has tended to group famine travelogues into an undifferentiated whole. Rather, Judd invites us to consider famine-era travel narratives as comprising a unique subgenre within the larger discursive field of travel literature. Here Judd argues that the immensity of the famine exerted great pressure on the form, topics, themes and goals of famine-era travelogues, and for this reason, famine travel narratives deserve detailed and organized consideration, as well as critical recognition of their status as an unprecedented subgenre. Drawing on an extensive array of underutilized sources, Travel Narratives of the Irish Famine adumbrates the Irish famine travelogue canon. With vigorous detail and lucid prose, Catherine Nealy Judd demonstrates the ways in which a contextualization of that canon, based on temporal structures and close readings of selective texts, offers twenty-first-century readers insight into the broader arguments and concerns generated by Ireland's Great Famine. Judd establishes the variety of political, personal and religious motives driving both obscure visitors and celebrities such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Carlyle and Harriet Martineau, to bear witness to Ireland's most devastating social crisis. This well-written and thought-provoking study of Famine travel narratives opens up Irish Famine history in gripping new ways. |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 497 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781800790841 1800790848 |