Anglo-Irish Literary Representations of the Famine and their Limitations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT5F_Vf-Hrw ¹

Brief Summary of my Research Paper

Anthony Trollope

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For my research paper, I decided to compare two works relating to the Irish Potato Famine by Irish author William Carleton and British author Anthony Trollope.  Carleton brazenly critiques the British government’s handling of the disaster in The Black Prophet while Trollope defends its course of action in Castle Richmond. Despite such obvious differences however, both works present a strikingly similar vision of the disaster— they offer an excessively politicized and spectral vision of the disaster at the expense of properly memorializing victims, pointing at a common failure to provide a therapeutic or even constructive interpretation of the event.  To be sure, this failure is more telling of our modern conception of needing to celebrate the humanity of victims and our progress as a society with regards to human rights than it is of the insensitivity of each author.

William Carleton

While often taxing and frustrating, my research process was incredibly illuminative in arriving at my current interpretation of the works.  I came into the research process not at all anticipating finding commonalities in Trollope and Carleton’s visions of the famine.  I felt as if Carleton’s political association with Ireland would make him much more sympathetic towards the plight of his fellow countrymen than Trollope.  This was not the case.  Having to rethink my thesis was definitely the best thing that could have happened— it no longer was simply a matter of selecting evidence to support an easy argument, but became an issue of trying to understand the hidden links between the works.  I realized that my expectations as a reader were clearly tainting my understanding of Castle Richmond and The Black Prophet.  It’s easy to dismiss these books as inconsiderate and dehumanizing.  It’s harder to understand the external factors contributing to such a representation of disaster.  This course has made me believe this to be true of all representations of disaster, both across time and space.

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