Adam Smith's problems: sympathy in the national tale

Abstract

It is a critical commonplace to read Lady Morgan’s The Wild Irish Girl (1806) and Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809) as national tales that use allegories of marriage to model a successful reconciliation between England and Ireland in the aftermath of the Act of Union. The national tale was a clearly political mode, one with the primary goal of representing Ireland anew to a class of English readers who saw the Irish as hopelessly backward and savage, and thereby articulating a model for the Union on the level of sentiment. This aim was hardly covert: it is openly declared, for example, on the title page of The Wild Irish Girl, which quotes Fazio Delli Uberti’s Travels Though Ireland in the 14th Century: “This race of men, tho’ savage they may seem / The country, too, with many a mountain rough, / Yet are they sweet to him who tries and tastes them. Copyright © 2008 The University of St. Thomas.