The Silence of the Land: Antiquarian Gothic and Ireland, 1790–1831

Abstract

This article argues that romantic-era antiquarian writing from Ireland threatened to disclose evidence of historical violence inflicted upon the Irish by the English, and to engender retaliatory violence in the present day. Even when Irish landscapes appeared inscrutable, their impassiveness peculiarly confirmed, rather than disproved, a violent imperial past. Beginning with a consideration of Edmund Burke’s emphatic but little studied contempt for antiquarian history, the article proceeds to explore how James Hardiman sought to recuperate Ireland’s history from its forcibly erased landscapes. The essay concludes by arguing that in The Wild Irish Girl (1806), Sydney Owenson compares her Irish setting to a dizzying array of British overseas colonies and strategic holdings, so that Ireland functions as a dark mirror of insatiable imperial ambition.