Thomas Dermody’s Archipelagic Poetry

Abstract

The Irish poet and child prodigy, Thomas Dermody, is a neglected figure in Romantic studies. This essay will argue that his work deserves to be revisited in the light of the upsurge in criticism that has sought to reconfigure Romanticism as a literary phenomenon that encompassed all of the nations in the British archipelago. Dermody and his work consistently embody such archipelagic concerns. This essay will focus on several aspects of Dermody’s archipelagic art, including his literary milieu in Ireland and Great Britain, his interest in the political relationships between the constituent nations of the archipelago and his use of diverse literary styles and genres from Augustan satire to Scots vernacular elegies. Coleridge’s engagement with Dermody’s work in the 1790s provides a tangible connection to a canonical Romantic figure and suggests that the two writers had shared aesthetic concerns during this period.