"The Nation Begins to Form": Competing Nationalisms in Morgan's The O'Briens and the O'Flahertys

Mme de Staël’s Cosmopolitan Imaginary and Sydney Owenson’s Early Novels

“…Wright distinguishes in that novel two competing versions of nationalism; the first, which she terms "antiquarian", "fulfils the conditions of the […] commonly called romantic nationalism" and is "at odds with modernity because of its investment in antiquity"; the second, which she terms "inaugural nationalism", emphasises, on the contrary, "the necessity of decisively breaking from the past. Inaugural nationalism is not based on derivation or evolution, but transformation -especially revolutionary or apocalyptic transformation 13 ". Antiquarian and inaugural nationalism in Woman compete for prevalence within the same character, Osmyn, who is frequently used by Owenson as her mouthpiece.…”

“…Also, the fact that these novels are generically hybrids, since Owenson's fiction is conjoined to, and disrupted by, a plethora of references and citations from mainly non-English European sources, such as travel and historiographical texts, often quoted in the original French or Italian, can be read as an example of what Pierre Macherey calls "a shattered aesthetic of the disparate 17 ". 13 Macherey's reading of De Staël provides a useful perspective for approaching Owenson; he reads, for example the Anglo-Italian Corinne's incessant role-playing as an artist, as the means whereby she displays and concurrently explains the "characteristic values of quite alien sensibilities", English or Italian, which "complement one another, mingle without merging and project their virtues outwards without renouncing the particular identity that constitutes them, and without corrupting it". In Mme de Staël's texts,…”