Gael Research Articles

“Celticism, ballad transmission, and the schizoid voice: Ossianic fragments in Owenson, Yeats, Joyce, and Beckett”

ABSTRACTThis essay surveys responses to Macpherson’s Ossian in Irish literature, alongside analysis of the development of literary Celticism. Despite being a key text behind the development of Celticism in Irish writing, Ossian is consciously rejected in Irish Romanticism and in the Celtic Revival. However, Ossian becomes a symbol of literary recycling and mental fragmentation in Irish Modernism. Texts studied in this essay include Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and Beckett’s Murphy.

The Forgotten Powerhouse: Analyzing the Brief Rise to Prominence of Lawn Tennis in Ireland in the Late-Nineteenth Century

Within the historiography of lawn tennis in Ireland, there remains considerable scope to discern how the sport rose to prominence – reaching its apex in the early 1890s – among the wealthy landed classes, and what influence it had upon the structure and culture of the sport globally. This is set against the assumed view of lawn tennis being a rather marginal sport during the late-nineteenth century when the fight for popularity between native Irish and British team sports dominated media narratives. Separated from much of this commotion, lawn tennis helped to forge landed aristocratic/gentry identity within urban/suburban locales across Ireland – principally in Dublin, where its leading clubs and championship were regarded almost on a par with its equivalents in London – and also emancipate Irish sportswomen, and a small number of working-class coaching-professionals who plied their trade in the leading clubs. Given the broader historical context of increasing land agitation and subsequent rising Irish populist nationalism, the growth of lawn tennis in itself remains an interesting phenomenon. Thus, the brief rise to prominence of tennis in Ireland, and specifically Dublin, is examined, contextualized within broader socio-cultural and politico-religious developments that pervaded the organization of Irish society, and British-Irish relations, during this time.

Varieties of English: an examination of an Irish English speaker

The aim of this paper is to compare a southern Irish English speaker who lives in New Zealand with what literature in the field portrays as typical speech for the Irish variety of English. This paper does not discuss the historical or contemporary reasons for why Irish English is as it is today. This paper has limited its analysis to the reasons why the native Irish speaker of English differs from other norms, and comments only on differences. The southern Irish English variety has unique phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactical features, as well as a distinguishing intonation and stress pattern. Only phonological differences are examined here. Four main aspects of Irish English are investigated; the /w/ ~ /hw/ contrast; the contrast of /t/ with /θ/; the STRUT /ʌ / and FOOT /ʊ/ vowels (the GOOSE vowel will only be looked at in the context of a variable with STRUT and FOOT; and the PRICE / ai / and CHOICE / Ɔɪ / diphthongs. The analysis of these sounds shows evidence that there are competing influences on an individual’s conscious or subconscious phonological choices; pride in one’s language and heritage might compete with one’s aspiring social status and professional ambitions. Together these could be further influenced by the linguistic environments one has been in or in which one currently finds oneself. These competing forces lead to some expected but also some unexpected departures from other norms.

Ecology in Paul Muldoon’s Postcolonial Poetry

This paper considers the place of ecology and environmentalist thought in Paul Muldoon’s postcolonial poetry. Employing the principles of postcolonial ecocriticism, the study throws light upon Muldoon’s poetical works where the Irish-American poet tries to preserve his native agricultural identity and tradition in face of the global Anglo-American culture. In most of his verse volumes, Muldoon mentions agrarian and green aspects as well as native rustic jargon, which helps enliven and strengthen his native Irish roots, and shield the Gaelic region’s distinct cultural and linguistic heritage. The poet’s portrayal of local landscape phenomena entails intellectual and emotional intimacy. He is personally attached to Irish ecological spots, and they are venues in which he finds a considerably remarkable meaning ,i.e., solid ground on which the anti-conquest’s cultural-lingual resistance stands. The private ( and public) worth of this georgic atmosphere helps foster both the poet’s and his natives’ stance against a plotted process of naturalization. Muldoon’s poems, too, show how postcolonial corporeal and cultural effect endeavours to boom throughout human and environmental worlds.

PROSODIC PECULIARITIES OF IRISH SPEECH IN THE BILINGUAL SITUATION

The investigation is dedicated to the analysis of prosodic peculiarities of Irish speech. The bilingual situation in which influence of the British English as well as general tendencies of the development common for national and regional variants of the English language characterize the Irish variant of English. Bilinguism in Ireland can be divided into four periods : 1) the beginning of British invasion which is characterized by gradual ousting of the Irish language; 2) the second period is characterized by discrimination of the Irish language, which was totally ousted from all the spheres of functioning, only it existed in rural regions; 3) the third period of its history is marked by the struggle for independence and the return of the native Irish language; 4) the growing of the Irish language prestige, giving it the official status mark the fourth period. During the historical process there were developed strong political, cultural and economic ties, however Britain has always dominated and thus, influenced differences between the two languages – the English and the Irish. It has been noted by the investigators of the linguistic situation in Ireland, a long refusal of the Irish language usage led to English language prevalence, even when the Irish language got the official status. There exists an exact division of the spheres of the Irish and the English usage and their social marking. Men are more conservative in daily language usage. Women often mix both the languages in speech. If one language displays the other there exists bilingual situation, so that neither displacement nor full perception is present. This fact allows to hope on preserving the Irish language. The material of the investigation which consists of quazispontaneous monological utterances of native Irish speakers from two regions – the North and the South of Ireland, was investigated with the help of perceptive and acoustic analyses. Perceptive analysis has revealed that the usage of Low Falling terminal tone has been the most frequent, as well as the variable character of frequency range Rising Head has also been recurrent in the Irish speech informants of the southern part of the country.

Oran an Fheamnaidh – song of the seaweed gatherer: an archaeology of early 19th-century kelping

At the very end of the 18th century, economic circumstance and the capricious consequences of warfare on the continent turned seaweed on the West Coast and Isles of Scotland into an important industrial resource. This resource was kelp: a glassy substance used in various industrial processes, particularly in the glass and soap industries. Chiefs and landowners in the west of Scotland were quick to take advantage of the economic opportunity it presented. The industry would have profound effects on the people who lived and worked in coastal communities. This paper seeks to outline a landscape archaeology of kelping as it was lived and experienced. It will draw on archaeological, documentary, and historical evidence, and will also consider Gaelic culture and oral tradition. Using a case study from Loch Aoineart, South Uist, the kelp industry will be considered in the context of an early 19th century Hebridean community.

Fionn mac Cumhaill among the Old English. Some comments on <em>The Book of Howth</em>

The Book of Howth, written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, sought to provide the Old English with a cultural identity. Its introductory section comprises some 13 folios of Ossianic and related lore. The Fianna, Howth stated, were imported from Denmark to protect the Irish; by implication, the Old English, too, had come from abroad to protect the land. Comparison of this material with native Irish–language sources provides us, on the one hand, with an important sixteenth–century witness to Ossianic lore, some of which was not recorded elsewhere until much later, while, on the other hand, it affords us a valuable glimpse of Irish culture as seen through the eyes of the Elizabethan Old English.

Romantic Medievalism from a New Comparative Perspective

From certain point of view a desperate defense of an aesthetic doctrine of classicism, undertaken by Jan Śniadecki, a Polish mathematician and astronomer of the eighteenth century, resembles the E. R. Curtius’ thesis on “Latinism” as a universal factor integrating European culture; it may be stated that post-Stanislavian classical writers in Poland were driven by the same “concern for the preservation of Western culture” which motivated Ernst Robert Curtius in the times of the Third Reich and after its collapse. But the noble-minded intentions were in both cases grounded on similarly distorted perspective, which ensued from a mistificatory attitude towards a non-Latin heritage of the European culture. The range of that mystification or delusion has been fully revealed by findings made by modern so-called new comparative mythology/philology. Another aspect of the problem is an uniform model of the Middle Ages, partially correlated with the Enlightenment-based stereotype of “the dark Middle Ages”, which despite of its anachronism existed in literary studies for a surprisingly long period of time. Although the Romantic Movement of 18th – 19th centuries has been quite correctly acknowledged as an anti-Latinistic upheaval, its real connections with certain traditions of Middle Ages still remain not properly understood. Some concepts concerning Macpherson’s The Works of ossian, put forward by modern ethnology, may yield clues to the research on the question. As suggested by Joseph Falaky Nagy, Macpherson’s literary undertaking may by looked into as a parallel to Acallam na Senórach compiled in Ireland between 11th and 13th centuries: in both cases to respond to threats to the Gaelic culture there arose a literary monument and compendium of the commendable past with the core based on the Fenian heroic tradition that was the common legacy for the Irish and Highlanders. Taking into consideration some other evidence, it can be ascertained that Celtic and Germanic revival initiated in the second half of 18th century was not only one of the most important impulses for the Romantic Movement, but it was also, in a sense, an actual continuation of the efforts of mediaeval writers and compilers (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Snorri Sturluson, Saxo Grammaticus, anonymous compilers of Lebor gabála Érenn and Acallam, Wincenty Kadłubek), who would successfully combine Latin, i.e. classical, and ecclesiastical erudition with a desire to preserve and adapt in a creative way their own “pagan” and “barbarian” legacy. A special case of this (pre)Romantic revival concerns Slavic cultures, in particular the Polish one. Lack of source data on the oldest historical and cultural tradition of Slavic languages, especially in the Western region, and no record about Slavic tradition in highbrow literary culture induced two solutions: the first one was a production of philological forgeries (like Rukopis královédvorský and Rukopis zelenohorský), the second one was an attempt to someway reconstruct that lost heritage. Works of three Romantic historians, W. Surowiecki, W. A. Maciejowski, F. H. Lewestam, shows the method. Seemingly contradicting theories they put forward share common ground in aspects which are related to the characteristics of the first Slavic societies: a sense of being native inhabitants, pacifism, rich natural resources based on highly-effective agriculture, dynamic demography, a flattened social hierarchy and physical prowess. The fact of even greater importance is that the image of that kind has the mythological core, the circumstance which remains hitherto unnoticed. Polish historians not only tended to identify historical ancient Slavs with mythical Scandinavian Vanir (regarding it obvious), but also managed to recall the great Indo-European theme of ”founding conflict” (in Dumézilian terms), despite whole that mythological model being far beyond the horizon of knowledge at that time. Despite all anachronisms, lack of knowledge and instrumental involvement in aesthetic, political or religious ideology, Romanticism really started the restitution of the cultural legacy of the Middle Ages, also in domain of linguistic and philological research. The consequences of that fact should be taken into account in literary history studies.

Regimenting the Gaeltacht: Authenticity, anonymity, and expectation in contemporary Ireland

Drawing on the framework of authenticity and anonymity, this article explores the Irish State's mobilisation of these opposing yet interrelated language ideologies in efforts to regiment the use of Irish both within the traditionally Irish-speaking Gaeltacht areas and nationwide. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in western Ireland, we examine how non-traditional Irish speakers' understanding of the Gaeltacht and its native speakers as a resource for immersion in the authentic language shapes expectations of how native Irish speakers within these areas not only speak, but also live and act. This discussion highlights the interconnections between linguistic ideology, social action, and political economy.

Verse in English from Spenser to Swift

AbstractIreland was in turmoil for much of the 17th century as, slowly and painfully, English language and culture gained supremacy over the language and culture of the native Irish. The verse and poetry we have in English from this period was the work of planters, administrators and the Old English, and, on occasions, of Irish speakers seeking to influence the rulers of the country. During recent years, much exciting new work has been undertaken on the verse of the period as research on manuscripts and early printed books has led to a substantial increase in the canon. We now know of over 100 poets active in Ireland between the time of Edmund Spenser and that of Jonathan Swift. In addition, scholars have begun exploring the links between the culture of 17th‐century Ireland and that of Scotland, Wales, and England. This article surveys the work that has been accomplished on the verse and poetry of the period and indicates several areas where further research is needed.

Recognizing food as part of Ireland’s intangible cultural heritage

ABSTRACTDrawing on evidence from across a range of disciplines (literature, folklore, history, sociology, etc.), this paper explores the lack of an iconic link between Ireland and food, explaining the reasons why Ireland and food are not immediately linked in the popular imagination. It argues for recognition of foodways as a significant element in Ireland’s intangible cultural heritage. It highlights and interrogates constructs, such as ‘national’ and ‘regional’ cuisines, charting the growing scholarship around Irish food history from the ground breaking work of A.T. Lucas and Louis Cullen to a recent emerging cluster of doctoral researchers. The paper identifies the potential in ideas of the Annales School for the study of Irish food history. Finally, it argues for a serious engagement with Irish language sources claiming that this Gaelic heritage can provide a competitive advantage in a new age of innovation and creativity.

ЯВЛЯЕТСЯ ЛИ ТЕМП И СЕГМЕНТАЦИЯ РЕЧИ ИРЛАНДЦЕВ ДИФФЕРЕНЦИАЛЬНЫМ ПРОСОДИЧЕСКОМ МАРКЕРОМ?

This article is devoted to the investigation of segmentation and temporal features of the speech of native Irish English speakers. Irish English is a combination of features borrowed from English, Celtic and Scottish. The situation of bilingualism, which developed historically and infl uenced the development of Irish English, is explained both by the historical factors and the economic development. It should also be noted that nowadays Irish language is socially in demand and remains a symbol of the revival of Irish culture and national identity. The conducted perceptive analysis allowed revealing certain temporal means that serve as gender and age differentiating markers. Thus, the distinctive features of Irish speech are syntagmatic division with the predominance of short and medium syntagmata in the speech of the age groups «20-25 years», «25-35 years», less fractional division in the speech of the informants older than 35 years, as well as faster speech rate of the female speakers compared to the male ones.

Assessment of the effects of sulfated polysaccharides extracted from the red seaweed Irish moss Chondrus crispus on the immune-stimulant activity in mussels Mytilus spp.

Seaweeds contain a number of health enhancing and antimicrobial bioactive compounds including sulfated polysaccharides (SP). In the present study, SP extracted from a European red seaweed Irish moss Chondrus crispus was chemically analyzed, SP content extracted and the immune-response effect on wild Irish mussels Mytilus spp. investigated for the first time. A high percent yield of SP was extracted from C. crispus and the immune-stimulant activity of SP was assessed in a laboratory trial with mussels exposed to three different treatments of low (10 μg mL−1), medium (20 μg mL−1) and high (50 μg mL−1) SP dose concentrations and a control mussel group with no exposure to SP. An initial mussel sample was processed prior to the trial commencing and mussels were subsequently sampled on Days 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 10 post SP exposure. Both cell, humoral and immune related gene responses including haemocyte cell viability, haemocyte counts, lysozyme activity and expression of immune related genes (defensin, mytimycin and lysozyme mRNA) were assessed. No mussel mortalities were observed in either the treated or non-treated groups. Mussels exposed with SP showed an increase in haemocyte cell viability and the total number of haemocytes compared to control mussels. Lysozyme activity was also higher in treated mussels. Additionally, up-regulated expression of defensin, mytimycin and lysozyme mRNA was observed in SP treated mussels shortly after exposure (on Days 1, 2, and 3) to SP. These results indicate that a high quality yield of SP can be readily extracted from C. crispus and more importantly based on the animal model used in this study, SP extracted from C. crispus can rapidly induce health enhancing activities in Mytilus spp. at a cellular, humoral and molecular level and with a prolonged effect up to ten days post treatment.

Staging the Revolution: Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and Sydney Owenson’s The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys

Staging the Revolution: Rossini’s Guillaume Tell and Sydney Owenson’s The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys Matthew L. Reznicek Sydney Owenson’s place in Irish literature in the Romantic period need not be defended; her novel The Wild Irish Girl (1806) remains a foundational iteration of the genre we know as the national tale. As Claire Connolly and others have shown, Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl occasioned an important cultural event that allowed its author “both the opportunity and the means to manipulate the culture market of early nineteenth-century Dublin.”1 The success of The Wild Irish Girl, Julia Wright observes, establishes the dominant pattern that shapes Owenson’s career as a novelist and gives shape to the genre of the national tale.2 The power of the national tale lies, in Ina Ferris’s words, in its “performative notion of itself: representation as less a portrayal of something than a presentation to someone.”3 In Ferris’s formulation, the national tale presents to the audience the “potential emergence of a new public,” which recalls April Alliston’s argument about the establishment of “fictional communities” that not only are imagined “as alternatives to both family and nation,” but more stridently understood to “specifically transgress and replace” those national bonds.4 This understanding of the national tale—as providing an alternative imagining of the community—raises two significant starting points that shape this argument. First, Ferris draws attention to the performativity of this representation, suggesting that the staging of the national community is powerful precisely because it enables an audience to imagine an alternative. Second, Alliston’s claims [End Page 109] regarding a transgression and replacement of the nation enables a shift in our understanding of the national tale; we can understand it participating in, and offering a cosmopolitan alternative to, the strictures of the nation-state. Highlighting the performative staging of an alternative to the nation-state calls attention to a characteristic concern shared in both Romantic national tales and in Romantic opera: the fundamental tension between “the personal sexual and affectional issues,” on the one hand, and the “setting of national struggle and ‘public duty,’” on the other.5 These twinned tensions between personal affection and public duty dominate such national tales as Walter Scott’s Waverley (1814), Maria Edgeworth’s The Absentee (1812), and Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl (1806), The Missionary (1811), and The O’Briens and the O’Flahertys (1827). Similarly, in Romantic Operas like Bellini’s Norma (1831), Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), and Rossini’s Mosé in Egitto (1818), Tancredi (1813), L’italiana in Algeri (1813), and, most notably, Rossini’s final opera, Guillaume Tell (1829). Thematic and narrative similarities suggest that there is a relationship between novels and operas written in the early part of the nineteenth century that has, for the most part, gone unremarked upon by scholars of opera and literature. In both the Romantic national tale and the Romantic opera, there is a preoccupation with an attempt, to combine Ferris and Alliston, to present the potential alternative community based on a sympathetic relationship between the audience and the potential, transgressive alternative. This conception of a transgressive alternative mirrors the theatrical project of Denis Diderot, who argues, in his De la Poésie Dramatique (1758), that the audience “will escape the wicked men whose company they keep; . . . they will find those with whom they would live.”6 This conception of the theater “enables the formation of an idealized community,” bringing about a social alternative.7 The Romantic opera and the Romantic national tale both attempt to articulate and to stage alternative, transgressive, and cosmopolitan communities. Both of these aesthetic forms achieve this through the literary mechanism of sympathy, which in turn demands action. However, the privacy of the novel—in contrast to the shared space of the theater—ultimately troubles the polyvocal potentiality that characterises the Romantic opera’s presentation of the imagined community. [End Page 110] Notably, Owenson’s political commentary becomes more direct in her travelogues France (1817), Italy (1821), and France in 1829–30 (1830).8 Not only do these political and continental writing lay the groundwork for her final Irish...

Cultivated for Consumption: Botany, Colonial Cannibalism, and National/Natural History in Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl

This essay argues that Sydney Owenson employs botanical imagery in her novel, The Wild Irish Girl (1806), to represent many facets of Irish colonialism as well as the 1800 Act of Union that formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Depicting the Irish as metaphorical plants, as food for England’s “body politic,” Owenson gestures toward a symbolic cannibalism as just one form of England’s colonial consumption of Ireland within the novel, and highlights this notion further through comparisons between the Irish peasantry and African slaves in the West Indian colonies. Melding ideas of science and sensibility, as well as natural history and national history, Owenson subtly exposes England’s exploitation of Ireland in this Act of Union.

The Protestant History of the Irish Reformation

448 Studies • volume 106 • number 424 The Protestant History of the Irish Reformation Alan Ford By splitting Europe into two rival religious camps, the Reformation gave birth to two distinct and divergent ways of writing its history: one Protestant, the other Catholic. Since each of these rival intellectual traditions claimed to represent truth and orthodoxy, each denouncing the other as false and heretical, this presented historians with an impossible challenge, one which, over the next three centuries, they signally failed to meet. What I want to do in this article is look at one side of these twin historiographical traditions by tracing how Protestant writers responded to the challenge of writing the history of the Reformation in Ireland. I will, for the sake of brevity, confine myself to the history of the Church of Ireland – there is, of course, another article to be written on the other Protestant denominations. I will cover the period, roughly from 1600 to the 1950s, when there was an identifiably Protestant school of history. Two of the most important challenges which faced Protestant historians when tackling the Irish Reformation were, first, that it did not seem very Irish; and second, that it was not much of a Reformation. Let us take these two issues in sequence. In England, it is possible, though still a matter of argument, to point to a tradition of underground dissent – the Lollards for example – and, more uncontroversially, to a tradition of humanist scholarship which in some ways prepared the ground for the Reformation, and helped the rapid growth of an indigenous reform movement from the 1520s onwards, as Luther’s ideas were adopted and adapted by his English followers. Ireland provided much less receptive ground for new ideas: there were no undercurrents of dissent, no unified polity, no common language, no university, no printing press; in short, no shared public sphere and very few Protestants. When, in 1536, the Irish parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, the very wording of the statute – largely following that of the English act and only substituting the word Ireland for England – pointed to its English origins. Given that one of the main attractions of the Reformation across Europe Alan Ford Studies • volume 106 • number 424 449 was its vernacular emphasis – the Bible and liturgy available not in Latin, but in a language the ordinary people could understand – the fact that the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity (1560) provided for the Book of Common Prayer to be used in Latin in Irish-speaking areas, suggests a certain difficulty in exploiting the vernacular appeal of the Reformation in Ireland. The close chronological association between the imposition of English civil authority in Ireland across the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and the attempts to spread the Reformation led, unsurprisingly, to many Irish people seeing Protestantism as an alien and foreign imposition. The second challenge for historians of the Reformation in Ireland is that there was no Reformation. This is, of course, exaggerating slightly: the Henrician and Elizabethan Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity (1536 and 1560) created an established state Church, the Church of Ireland, governed by the monarch, with bishops, clergy and laity. The inescapable fact remains, however, that this Church only ever gained the support of a small percentage of the Anglo-Irish – the descendants of the mediaeval Anglo-Norman settlers – and an even smaller proportion of the native Irish. The majority of the adherents of this minority state Church were English, Welsh and Scottish settlers who came over to Ireland in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It is no coincidence that the province which still today has the highest proportion of Church of Ireland members is Ulster, the location of the most successful colonial venture. And, of course, this reliance on settlers and the failure to win native adherents only further accentuated the Englishness of the Church of Ireland. The result was famously summed up by the Protestant historian, Sir Richard Cox, in 1689: ‘at this day we know no difference of nation but what is expressed by Papist and Protestant; if the most ancient natural Irish-man be Protestant, no man takes him to be other than an English-man; and if a Cockney...

The use of the discourse-pragmatic marker ‘like’ by native and non-native speakers of English in Ireland

This paper investigates the use of ‘like’ as a discourse-pragmatic marker by recently-arrived Polish and Chinese migrants in Dublin, Ireland. The data comprises 14hours of audio-recorded sociolinguistic interviews with 42 participants, including a control sample of six native Irish English speakers. The frequency of ‘like’ is investigated, along with its variable positioning within the clause, and its discourse-pragmatic function. In total 926 tokens are examined, and statistical tests, including fixed and mixed effects regression models, are used to determine the significance of the results. The results show that the frequency of ‘like’ among the non-native speakers reaches the levels of the native speakers after approximately three years of residence in Ireland. Proficiency in English is not found to be significant, suggesting that it is exposure to native speaker input that drives this acquisition. The results also show that ‘like’ in clause-final position, considered to be an emblematic feature of Irish English (and a ‘non-standard’ feature of world Englishes more generally), was employed significantly more often by the native Dubliners, with no effect in this instance for length of residence among the migrants. As regards the function of ‘like’, it was found to be used predominantly to illustrate, explain or introduce information. ‘Like’ in clause-final position was also found to be used as a mitigator or hedge, predominantly by the Irish, and particularly in short statements of personal opinion that could be perceived as face-threatening or opposing the interlocutor's views.

A Letter from I.B. Gentleman: Sir Thomas Smith’s Ulster scheme and its Scottish context

Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) was a political philosopher and writer. His works Discourse of the Commonweal of This Realm of England (1549) and De Republica Anglorum (1562–65) are significant texts in early English political theory. Smith was also a colonizer and in 1572 embarked on a plantation scheme in Ulster. That year Smith’s son published a pamphlet advertising the scheme to potential investors and adventurers. Smith claimed that participants “would form an aristocratic elite” (Ellis 266), but first had to drive out the “wicked barbarous and uncivil people, some Scottish and some wild Irish” (Strype 131). The pamphlet: A Letter from I. B. Gentleman, was both controversial and influential, and described as “the first printed publicity for an English colonial project” (Quinn 551). Though I. B. Gentleman is much studied, the Gaelic Scottish influence on Smith’s plans, pamphlet and associated material has been insufficiently considered. This study seeks to address that deficiency.

Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment. Anahid Nersessian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. 273.

<i>Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment</i>. Anahid Nersessian. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. 273.

The Templars, The Witch, and the Wild Irish by Maeve Brigid Callan

<i>The Templars, The Witch, and the Wild Irish</i> by Maeve Brigid Callan