Region and Regency: national and regional identity in early nineteenth century female bildungsroman

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This thesis will explore regional and national identity in Romantic period female bildungsroman and courtship novels, a genre usually studied for insights into gender politics (e.g. Kirkham, 1983, Gilbert and Gubar, 1979). In contrast, this project will explore the use of ideas of regional and national identityin the fictions of Jane Austen (England), Maria Edgeworth (Ireland) and Susan Ferrier (Scotland). The project's main aims are: To determine how geographical identities are presented, for example through the symbolic use of dialect speech, food, names and landscape, To explore how regional and national identities impact on writers' reception and reputation, both in their lifetimes and posthumously, To examine the difference between presentations of regionality and nationhood in published fictions and unpublished works, in order to investigate whether these writers modified geopolitical markerswhen preparing their work for a public audience. This research will build on my undergraduate studies of the long eighteenth century ('Talking Horses', 'Self and the World'), BA dissertation on food in Austen's juvenilia, and MA dissertation on food in Ferrier's novels. It will also build on MA modules on 'Literary Histories', 'Place, Region and Empire' and 'Textualities', which are honing my understanding of reception, literary geography, text and textediting. This project is ideally centred on the University of Nottingham, Professor Pratt is an expert in Romanticism and the recovery of reputations, Dr Ni Fhlathuin specialises in Romantic women's writing and national identities, and the Centre for Regional Literature and Culture is hosting the 2019 British Association of Romantic Studies Conference, which will provide me with unique networking, dissemination and development opportunities. I will also benefit from cross-institutional supervision by Dr James (Leicester), whose work on the reception of women writers complements my project.