English Literature and the Ulster Crises of the Seventeenth Century

Highley（2008）、Kerrigan（2008）、Maley（2002）和Schwyzer（2004）最近的研究令人信服地认为，早期现代英国文学通常是在“群岛”背景下创作的：也就是说，“英国”各个岛屿和地区之间的相互联系是一种新发展的感觉。然而，很少有人对群岛上竞争最激烈的地区——北爱尔兰——给予批判性的关注。在整个17世纪，阿尔斯特发生了一系列相关的危机，包括盖尔贵族文化几乎完全消失，盎格鲁-苏格兰种植园，1641年起义，以及德里围城。正如群岛环境所表明的那样，这些不是孤立现象，而是与整个岛屿集团正在进行的宗教和政治动荡有关。但17世纪阿尔斯特危机在英国文学上留下的足迹至今还没有被严谨地研究过。该项目旨在探索在17世纪阿尔斯特撰写或传播的英语文本，以及那些对群岛其他地区情况的评论。在这样做的过程中，它的目的是更详细地阐明文学作品与阿尔斯特政治、宗教和种族界线上形成的各种身份之间的关系，并研究文学与阿尔斯特危机在群岛其他地区的政治意义。这本专著将由七章组成。第一章，“介绍：群岛地区/本地化阿尔斯特，”将作为理论和方法介绍专著。第二章，“上演奥尼尔：九年战争和伯爵的逃亡”，将研究大量关于休·奥尼尔，蒂龙伯爵这个有争议的人物的文本。莎士比亚《亨利五世》以外的戏剧和诗歌涉及奥尼尔和九年战争；此外，大多数评论家都没有详细描述奥尼尔在詹姆斯王朝时期的功绩，包括他逃离爱尔兰，以及试图争取欧洲大陆的军事支持。第三章，“播种帝国主义：书写阿尔斯特种植园”，将关注1609- 1610年左右创作的文本——包括弗朗西斯·培根、托马斯·布伦哈塞特、约翰·斯比德的作品，以及伦敦舞台上英国浪漫主义的流行——论证阿尔斯特种植园在英国大都会文学文化上留下的印记比迄今为止所认识到的要大。第四章，“主教身份：群岛上的阿马”，将详细考察17世纪关于阿马市在阿尔斯特省和爱尔兰岛的文化和教会中心地位的争论。第五章，“让弥尔顿清醒：1641年的后果”，将建立在弥尔顿学者日益认识到的基础上，即《失乐园》中路西法叛乱的表现，部分是由弥尔顿对1641年阿尔斯特起义的反应所决定的。第六章，“围攻倡议：伦敦-德里和盎格鲁-爱尔兰人”，将研究德里围攻的文学表现和反应。评论家们过于频繁地错误地将德里之围视为一个原始场景，视为群岛上一系列政治关系的开端。本章旨在通过在17世纪阿尔斯特“危机叙事”流派的背景下重新定位对围攻的文学反应来转移批评重点。第七章，“后记：重新定义阿尔斯特经典”，将论证阿尔斯特文学的批评家们，也许可以理解，被二十世纪的政治危机分散了注意力，特别是分裂和“麻烦”：因此，阿尔斯特文学的经典被不必要地缩短了。本章将论证“阿尔斯特文学”的概念有着更长的历史，尽管创伤较少。

Recent research by Highley (2008), Kerrigan (2008), Maley (2002), and Schwyzer (2004) has convincingly argued that early modern English literature was often composed in an 'archipelagic' context: that is, with a newly developing sense of the interconnectedness of the various islands and regions of 'Britain.' Nevertheless, little critical attention has been paid to the most fiercely contested region of the archipelago, the north of Ireland. A series of related crises unfold in Ulster throughout the course of the seventeenth century, including the almost total disappearance of aristocratic Gaelic culture, the Anglo-Scottish Plantation, the Rising of 1641, and the Siege of Derry. As an archipelagic context makes clear, these are not insular phenomena but are instead related to the ongoing religious and political upheavals across the island grouping. But the footprint left on English literature by the Ulster crises of the seventeenth century has not to date been investigated in a rigorous manner. This project aims to explore both the English-language texts written or circulated in seventeenth-century Ulster, and those which comment on the situation from other regions of the archipelago. In doing so, it aims both to elucidate in more detail the relationship between literary production and the various identities forged along political, religious and ethnic lines in Ulster, and to examine the political significance of literary engagements with the Ulster crises in other parts of the archipelago. The monograph will consist of seven chapters. Chapter One, 'Introduction: Archipelagic Regions / Localising Ulster,' will serve as a theoretical and methodological introduction to the monograph. Chapter Two, 'Staging the O'Neill: The Nine Years War and the Flight of the Earls,' will examine the large body of texts concerning the controversial figure of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. Plays and poems beyond Shakespeare's Henry V engage with O'Neill and the Nine Years War; moreover, most critics have failed to engage in detail with O'Neill's Jacobean exploits, including his flight from Ireland, and attempts to raise continental military support. Chapter Three, 'Planting Empir(e)icism: Writing the Ulster Plantation,' will pay attention to the texts composed around 1609-10 - including the work of Francis Bacon, Thomas Blenerhasset, John Speed, and the fashion for British Romance on the London stage - to argue that the Plantation of Ulster left a greater mark on metropolitan English literary culture than has hitherto been realised. Chapter Four, 'Episcopal Identities: Archipelagic Armagh,' will examine in detail seventeenth-century disputes about the cultural and ecclesiastical centrality of the city of Armagh to the province of Ulster and the island of Ireland. Chapter Five, 'Bringing Milton to a Head: The Aftermath of 1641,' will build on the growing recognition among Milton scholars that the representation of the rebellion of Lucifer in Paradise Lost is in part conditioned by Milton's reaction to the 1641 rising in Ulster. Chapter Six, 'Sieging the Initiative: London-Derry and the Anglo-Irish,' will examine literary representations of, and reactions to, the Siege of Derry. Critics have too frequently made the mistake of treating the Siege of Derry as a primal scene, as the beginning of a set of political relationships in the archipelago. This chapter aims to shift the critical emphasis by relocating the literary response to the Siege in the context of the seventeenth-century Ulster genre of 'crisis narrative'. Chapter Seven, 'Epilogue: Redefining the Ulster Canon,' will argue that critics of Ulster literature have, perhaps understandably, been distracted by the political crises of the twentieth century, particularly Partition and 'the troubles': as such, the canon of Ulster literature has been unnecessarily foreshortened. This chapter willargue that the notion of "Ulster literature" has a longer, though less traumatic, history.