Lady Morgan and Thomas Moore : Irish perceptions of Italy and the uses of national images in the nineteenth century

Abstract

Constructions of diversity are dictated by epistemological and political reasons and have different uses at different times. Literary Italy does not correspond to a geopolitical entity but is a construction based as much on what has been written about it as on what people have seen. The 'madein- Ireland' Italy that reached the Romantic writers of the first half of the nineteenth century was a composite construction reflecting conflicting loyalties since it comprised on the one hand the stereotypes inherited from the Ascendancy tradition and on the other images of Italy as bearing a special relationship to Ireland.' Indeed, the epistemological and political reasons for constructing an image of Italy in Ireland at the beginning of the 19th century were quite special and, as to the past, what had been experienced and written by the English about Italy did not totally coincide with what had been experienced and written by the Irish. [excerpt]