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提出，早期的现代英语文学往往是在“群岛”的背景下创作的：也就是说，对“英国”各个岛屿和地区的相互关联性有了一种新的认识。然而，几乎没有人对群岛上竞争最激烈的地区--爱尔兰北部--给予批判性的关注。在整个17世纪期间，阿尔斯特发生了一系列相关的危机，包括贵族盖尔文化的几乎完全消失，盎格鲁-苏格兰种植园，1641年的崛起，以及德里的围困。正如群岛背景所表明的那样，这些不是孤立的现象，而是与整个岛群正在发生的宗教和政治动乱有关。但17世纪阿尔斯特危机在英国文学上留下的足迹迄今还没有得到严格的调查。该项目旨在探索在17世纪阿尔斯特编写或传播的英语文本，以及那些评论群岛其他地区情况的英语文本。这样做的目的既是为了更详细地阐明文学生产与阿尔斯特政治、宗教和族裔之间形成的各种身份之间的关系，也是为了审查在该群岛其他地区与阿尔斯特危机有关的文学活动的政治意义。这部专著将由七章组成。第一章《导言：群岛地区/本地化阿尔斯特》将作为专著的理论和方法介绍。第二章，《上演奥尼尔：九年战争和伯爵的逃亡》，将研究关于泰隆伯爵休·奥尼尔这一有争议的人物的大量文本。除了莎士比亚的《亨利五世》和《九年战争》之外的戏剧和诗歌；此外，大多数评论家没有详细讨论奥尼尔的雅各布人的功绩，包括他逃离爱尔兰，以及试图提高欧洲大陆的军事支持。第三章《种植帝国：书写阿尔斯特种植园》将关注1609-10年前后创作的文本--包括弗朗西斯·培根、托马斯·布莱纳海赛特、约翰·斯皮德和伦敦舞台上的英国浪漫主义时尚--争辩说阿尔斯特种植园给英国大都市文学文化留下了比迄今所认识到的更大的印记。第四章《圣公会身份：阿尔马群岛》将详细探讨17世纪有关阿尔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，《将弥尔顿带入头脑：1641年的后果》，将建立在弥尔顿学者越来越多的认识上，即在《失乐园》中，路西法的反叛表现在一定程度上是由弥尔顿对1641年阿尔斯特起义的反应决定的。第六章《围困德里：伦敦-德里与盎格鲁-爱尔兰人》将考察对德里围困的文学表现和反应。批评人士经常犯下这样的错误，即将德里围困视为原始场景，视为群岛一系列政治关系的开始。这一章旨在转移批评的重点，将文学对围困的反应放在17世纪阿尔斯特风格的危机叙事的背景下。第七章《序言：重新定义阿尔斯特正典》将辩称，阿尔斯特文学的批评者被20世纪的政治危机分散了注意力，特别是分治和麻烦：因此，阿尔斯特文学的正典被不必要地缩短了。这一章将论证“阿尔斯特文学”的概念有更长的历史，尽管创伤较小。

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.