A book symposium for Claire Connolly's new publication, Irish Romanticism: A Literary History

What does 'Irish romanticism' mean and when did Ireland become romantic? How does Irish romanticism differ from the literary culture of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain, and what qualities do they share? Former Burns Scholar Claire Connolly proposes that Romanticism is a temporally and aesthetically distinct period in Irish culture in her new book, Irish Romanticism: A Literary History (Cambridge University Press). Connolly argues that during this period, Irish literature flourished in new forms and styles, as evidenced by the lives and writings of Thomas Dermody, Mary Tighe, Maria Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, Thomas Moore, Charles Maturin, John Banim, Gerald Griffin, William Carleton, and James Clarence Mangan. Their books were written, sold, circulated, and read in Ireland, Britain, and America, and, as such, were caught up in the shifting dynamics of a changing print culture, itself shaped by asymmetries of language, power, and population. 

Elisa Cozzi (Notre Dame) and Colleen Taylor (Boston College) will be joining Connolly to discuss Irish Romanticism. 

Claire Connolly is Professor of Modern English at University College Cork in Ireland and author of A Cultural History of the Irish Novel, 1790-1829 (Cambridge University Press) as well as many essays on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish culture. With Marjorie Howes (BC), she was the General Editor of the six-volume series, Irish Literature in Transition, 1700-2020, as well as editor of Volume 2 of the series, Irish Literature in Transition, 1780-1830 (Cambridge University Press). 

Elisa Cozzie specializes in Irish, British, and Italian literary culture in the Romantic period. Her work examines the circulation of manuscript material, radical ideas, and literary influences across Europe's coteries. During her NEH Fellowship, Cozzi is working on a book-length study of Irish-Italian literary and cultural exchanges.

Colleen Taylor specializes in eighteenth-century Irish and British literature and the environmental humanities. She is the author of Irish Materialisms: The Nonhuman and the Making of Colonial Ireland, 1690-1830 (Oxford University Press). Her current research project examines eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Irish culture through the blue humanities, theorizing and decolonial implications of Ireland's oceanic imagination.