Castle Rackrent 1

Outline

• British fiction in transition: CR as an ‘eighteenth-century’ novel

• British fiction in transition: CR as a ‘nineteenth-century’ novel

• ‘...An Hibernian Tale, Taken from Facts...’

• The nature of ME’s satire on Anglo-Irish landlords

CR as an ‘eighteenth-century’ novel

• The relative crudity of eighteenth-century fiction – the novel in a wild state

• CR strong on narrative point of view, but weak on characterization – would seem to be in-capable of doing both at the same time

• The unfamiliar look of CR – a Preface, followed by ‘An Hibernian Tale’ with footnotes, followed by a postscript, followed by an ‘Advertisement to the English Reader’, followed by a Glossary

CR as an ‘eighteenth-century’ novel

• In its ‘wildness’ CR presents itself as a remarkably fertile form of fiction, capable of stimulating subsequent developments in the tradition of novel-writing – ‘one of the most famous unread novels in English’ (Kirkpatrick)

CR as a ‘nineteenth-century’ novel

• The innovativeness of CR – the first regional novel, the first Irish novel, the first novel to use dialect, forerunner of the ‘historical novel’ – ME the most successful and celebrated novelist before Scott

• Ongoing shift from the novel-as-commodity to the novel-as-literature – CR asks to be taken seriously as a commentary on Irish affairs leading up to the Union with Britain

‘...An Hibernian Tale Taken from Facts...’

• Castle Rackrent

An Hibernian Tale

Taken from Facts,

And from the Manners of the Irish Squires,

Before the Year 1782

‘...An Hibernian Tale Taken from Facts...’

• 1782: Independent Irish Parliament (Henry Grattan); ME settles in Edgeworthstown, County Longford (Francis Edgeworth/ James I, 1619)

• 1798: Irish Rebellion (Wolfe Tone)

• 1800: Castle Rackrent

• 1800-1: Act of Union

‘...An Hibernian Tale Taken from Facts...’

• 1812: ME, The Absentee

• 1845-51: Irish potato famine (Daniel O’ Connell)

The nature of ME’s satire on Anglo-Irish landlords

• ‘…the Manners of the Irish Squires…’

• ME’s relation to the Irish Catholics . . .

• The role of Thady Quirk as chronicler of the Rackrent heirs: ‘honest Thady’, ‘old Thady’, ‘poor Thady’

• ‘. . . as I have lived, so will I die, true and loyal to the family . . .’ (p. 8)

The nature of ME’s satire on Anglo-Irish landlords

• The irony of an ‘honest’ narrative functioning as a radical critique of what is narrated in the given novel – Thady an ‘unconscious double agent’

• Cf. Lukács on Scott, Marx and Engels on Bal-zac, Lenin on Tolstoy – conservative realist narrative fulfills the function of radical critique

• See also David Richter: ‘Thady’s wit is designed as faux-naif art’ – at http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/ ENGLISH/Staff/richter/rackrent.html

The nature of ME’s satire on Anglo-Irish landlords

• Through Quirk as narrator ME changes the fo-cus of conflict in Ireland from religious belief to class difference

• The rise of Thady’s son, Jason . . .• ‘to look at me, you would hardly think “poor

Thady” was the father of attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and never minds what poor Thady says, and having better than 1500 a-year, landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady, but I wash my hands of his doings’ (p. 8)

The nature of ME’s satire on Anglo-Irish landlords

• Symbolic nature of the relationship between Sir Condy and Jason Quirk: ‘… the catastrophe of Sir Condy’s history …’ (p. 96)

• View of the significance of the upcoming Union of Ireland and Britain: ‘It is a prob-lem of difficult solution to determine, whe-ther an Union will hasten or retard the amelioration of this country’ (p. 97)