Figures of Authority in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: (6 Society for the Study of Nineteenth Century Ireland)

This interdisciplinary collection investigates the forms that authority assumed in nineteenth-century Ireland, the relations they bore to international redefinitions of authority, and Irish contributions to the reshaping of authority in the modern age. At a time when age-old sources of social, political, spiritual and cultural authority were eroded in the Western world, Ireland witnessed both the restoration of older forms of authority and the rise of figures who defined new models of authority in a democratic age. Using new comparative perspectives as well as archival resources in a wide range of fields, the essays gathered here show how new authorities were embodied in emerging types of politicians, clerics and professionals, and in material extensions of their power in visual, oral and print cultures. These analyses often eerily echo twenty-first-century debates about populism, suspicion of scholarly and intellectual expertise, and the role of new technologies and forms of association in contesting and recreating authority. Several contributions highlight the role of emotion in the way authority was deployed by figures ranging from Daniel O’Connell to W.B. Yeats, foreshadowing the perceived rise of emotional politics in our own age. This volume demonstrates that many contested forms of authority that now look ‘traditional’ emerged from nineteenth-century crises and developments, as did the challenges that undermine authority. CONTRIBUTORS: Marguerite Corporaal, Patrick Geoghegan, Patrick Maume, Michelle McCann, Caroline M. McGee, James H. Murphy, Shane Nagle, Niamh NicGhabhann, Richard Parfitt, Colleen M. Thomas, Tom Walker

Table of Contents:
Introduction Raphaël Ingelbien and Susan Galavan The Making of Political Icons 1. The O’Connellite Persuasion  Patrick Geoghegan 2. William Johnston, Populism and Authority in Ulster Protestant Politics  Richard Parfitt Authority and Local Governance 3. Undermined Authority: John Reynolds and Dublin Corporation  James H. Murphy 4. Property, Privilege and Politics: A History of the Coroner in Pre-Famine Ireland (1801–1846)  Michelle McCann  The Authority of History  5. A Comparative Perspective: The Problem of Monarchical Authority in National Historiography in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Germany  Shane Nagle 6. Sermons and the Performance of Historiographical Authority in the Construction of the Roman Catholic Built Landscape, 1880–1890  Niamh NicGhabhann  Assertions and Subversions of Catholic Power 7. Power, Patronage, and the Production of Catholic Material Culture in Nineteenth-Century Ireland  Caroline M. McGee 8. Michael McCarthy’s Campaigns against Clerical Authority  Patrick Maume  Aesthetic Authority 9. Invoking the Authority of the Middle Ages in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: The ‘Irish Crosses’ of Earley & Powells  Colleen M. Thomas 10. W.B. Yeats, Scholastic Aestheticism and Cultural Authority in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland  Tom Walker 11. Local-Colour Writers: Figures of Authority?  Marguérite Corporaal

About the Author :
Raphaël Ingelbien is Associate Professor in Literary Studies at KU Leuven. Susan Galavan is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Architecture at KU Leuven.