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Ireland's Great Famine generated Western Europe's most devastating social crisis of the nineteenth century, 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 undi erentiated whole. Judd invites us to consider Famine-era travel narratives as comprising a unique subgenre within the larger discursive - eld 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.
List of contents
Contents: Introduction - Early Famine Travelers, 1845-1846 - «An Acre of Stony Ground»: Orangeism, Wastelands, and Agriculture in Thomas Campbell Foster's Letters, 1845-1846 -Theresa Cornwallis West's 1846 Summer Visit: United Irishmen, Young Ireland, and Mazzini's Risorgimento - Relief Work and Infrastructure, 1847-1848 - Peripatetic Charity in 1847: Pilgrimage, Soup Kitchens, and Skibbereen - Athlone, the Bog of Allen, and Famine Civil Engineering, 1846 to 1847 - Revolution and Compassion Fatigue, 1848-1850 - Revolutionary Ireland, 1848: New York City Tourists and the John Mitchel Trial - Celebrity Tourists, 1848-1849: De Vere and Tennyson - Duffy and Carlyle - Sidney Godolphin Osborne, the Irish Famine, and the Illustrated London News, 1849-1850 - Late Famine Ireland, 1849-1853 - «Obliterated, Never to Return»: Travel Literature in Late and Post Famine Ireland, 1849-1853.
About the author
Catherine Nealy Judd earned her MA and PhD degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, where she researches and teaches Nineteenth-Century Irish, British, and American historical and literary topics. She is the author of Bedside Seductions: Nursing and the Literary Imagination, 1830-1880, as well as numerous articles and book chapters on such subjects as Henry James and the Civil War and Anthony Trollope¿s Famine novel Castle Richmond.
Summary
Proposes that a new literary genre emerged from the crucible of the Great Famine, that is, the Irish Famine travelogue. Judd invites us to consider Famine-era travel narratives as comprising a unique subgenre within the larger discursive field of travel literature.
