Description
Book SynopsisThe sesquicentenary of the Great Irish Famine saw the emergence of seminal, often revisionist, scholarship addressing the impact of the catastrophe on Ireland’s economy (including its relations with Britain) and investigating topics such as the suffering of the rural classes, landlord and tenant relations, Poor Laws and relief operations. The Great Irish Famine and Social Class represents a significant new stage in Irish Famine scholarship, adopting a broader interdisciplinary approach that includes ground-breaking demographical, economic, cultural and literary research on poverty, poor relief and class relations during one of Europe’s most devastating food crises. The volume incorporates a comparative European framework, as well as exploring the issue of class in relation to the British and North American Famine diaspora.
Table of ContentsCONTENTS: Melissa Fegan: How the Other Three-Quarters Lived: The Cabin in Famine Literature – Paweł Hamera: «[W]orse than the Great Polish and Russian Proprietors»: Landlord-Tenant Relations in Ireland and Partitioned Poland in the Pre-Famine Period – Ciarán Reilly: «A Vast Waste of Pauperism»: An Examination of Irish Famine Eviction – Declan Curran: Organizational Narrative and Memory in Social Context: Representations of the Great Irish Famine in Official Publications of Irish Joint-Stock Banks – Peter Gray: William Sharman Crawford, the Famine and County Down – Christopher Cusack: Transformative Nationalism and Class Relations in Irish Famine Fiction, 1896–1909 – Andrés Eiríksson: «Paupers and Beggars Brats»: Governance and Mortality in the Parsonstown Workhouse during the Great Famine – Marguérite Corporaal: Workhouses as Heterotopic Spaces in Early Famine Fiction – Lewis Darwen/Brian Gurrin: «Bad As It Is, We Were Better Off in England»: Locating the Famine Irish Experience in Britain through Deposition estimony – Jason King: «The Atrocious Avarice of the Irish Landlords»: Canadian Public Sentiment and the Irish Famine Migration of 1847 – Peter D. O’Neill: The Famine Irish, the Catholic Church, and the Cultural Dynamics of the American Middle Class.
