Poetry and Jacobite Politics in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland - Paperback

by Murray G. H. Pittock (Author), Howard Erskine-Hill (Editor), John J. Richetti (Editor)

This book seeks to rewrite assumptions about the Augustan era through an exploration of Jacobite ideology. The author studies canonical and noncanonical literature and uncovers a new "four nations" literary history defined in terms of a struggle for control of the language of authority between Jacobite and Hanoverian writers. Sources explored include ballads in Scots, Irish, Welsh and Gaelic. The author concludes that the literary history of the Augustan age is built on the history of the victors in the Revolution of 1688.

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The project of this book is to question and rewrite assumptions about the nature of the Augustan era through an exploration of Jacobite ideology. Taking as its starting point the fundamental ambivalence of the Augustan concept the author studies canonical and non-canonical literature and uncovers a new 'four nations' literary history of the period defined in terms of struggle for control of the language of authority between Jacobite and Hanoverian writers. This struggle is seen to have crystallized Irish and Scottish opposition to the British state. The Jacobite cause generated powerful popular literature and the sources explored include ballads, broadsides and writing in Scots, Irish, Welsh and Gaelic. The author concludes that the literary history we inherit is built on the political outcome of the Revolution of 1688.