BETWEEN SPENSER AND SWIFT

While recent studies of Edmund Spenser and Jonathan Swift have firmly relocated both writers in their Irish as well as their English context, English writing in Ireland between these monolithic figures has been largely neglected. This study is the first to explore in detail the literary territory between Spenser and Swift. Examining a range of texts, from fragments to sophisticated publications such as economic improvement manuals, histories, plays, romances and poems, Deana Rankin demonstrates how writers in Ireland articulated the transition from soldier to settler across this century of war and political turmoil. She illuminates both centre and periphery by revealing for the first time the richness of English writing in Ireland during the period and its sustained engagement with canonical English literature, including the work of Shakespeare, Sidney and Milton. Historians and literary scholars will find much to discover in this significant new contribution to early modern British studies.

Deana Rankin is Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Girton College, Cambridge. She has previously worked as a theatre manager and a Director of the Southern Arts Board, and has published articles on early modern English and Irish literature.

BETWEEN SPENSER

AND SWIFT:

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY

IRELAND

DEANA RANKIN

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521846530

© Deana Rankin 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-13 978-0-521-84302 7 - hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-84302 2 - hardback

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or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on
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Dedication

For Trevor, my father

and in memory of Lottie, my mother

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

This book has taken shape in a world of outbreaks and cessations, ceasefires and talks about talks. The seed was planted some years ago at a seminar led by Edward Said and Victor Kiernan at a conference of the Twenty First Century Trust. It was encouraged by conversations with Bernard O'Donoghue, Patricia Coughlan, Declan Kiberd and Robert Welch; it eventually took root as an Oxford doctoral thesis on military writing in seventeenth-century Ireland, nurtured by the generous support of the British Academy and St John's College, Oxford.

There, I had the great good fortune to have as supervisors David Norbrook and Toby Barnard. In their own work, they are example and illustration; in their patient, meticulous and enthusiastic reading of mine they have been more than generous. I thank them both for continuing to supervise me during their own precious sabbaticals. I especially thank David Norbrook for carrying chapters with him to the New World . . . and back again to Oxford.

The valuable comments and contributions of my examiners, Nigel Smith and Jane Ohlmeyer, did much to help shape the next transplantation. A Government of Ireland Post-doctoral Award enabled me to spend two years at NUI, Galway, working on the fringes of the Centre for the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change. The Director, Nicholas Canny, was a formidable and wonderfully generous mentor. The final shape of the book owes a great deal both to his interventions and to his support. Disciplinary borders were fiercely contested, both in seminars and at the fabled History department coffee breaks. Kevin Barry went far beyond the call of duty to welcome me to the English department. A host of people provided excellent conversation and much food for thought: Daniel Carey and Sue Jones, Lionel Pilkington, Niall Ó Ciosáin, Sean Ryder, Tadgh Foley, Mícheál Mac Craith, Anne Mulhall, Marie-Louise Coolahan, Kathryn Laing. Catherine and Mimi Lafarge went even further and helped make Galway a home.

The final stages of drafting have happened not in Galway, royalist capital of 1650–52, but on the road to Cromwell's Huntingdon. Girton College, Cambridge has offered the perfect place for conversation and reflection: to my colleagues – in particular Nick Perkins, Anne Fernihough, James Simpson, Juliet Dusinberre – and to my students, I owe thanks. The Cambridge Irish Studies Seminar, like the Oxford Irish History Seminar before it, has been a fine forum for testing ideas. And Ray Ryan at Cambridge University Press has been a patient, stalwart and encouraging editor. My thanks go to him and the staff involved in production of the book.

Much of the research for this book was undertaken in the Bodleian Library and the British Library. I have also made much use of the James Hardiman, Galway; Trinity College, Dublin; the Royal Irish Academy; Marsh's Library; University Library, Cambridge and the Armagh Public Library. I wish to thank the staff of each; they have been unfailingly efficient and helpful.

Many have lived with this project through all its stages. The Rankins – T. J., Wendy, Andrew – and the Robinsons – Julie, Trevor, Charlotte, Matthew, Annie – have given more support to this book than they know. Patricia Palmer in both her own work and her friendship, whether from the North, South or West, has always been a perceptive critic and a fine one to talk to. Mark Osterfield has offered extraordinary insight and conversation; Stephen Mottram has walked and talked through many knotty questions; Vicki Bertram offered much-needed perspective; Roger Mortlock provided education in diversion. In Oxford the Women and Ireland group was a deep well of friendship and ideas – my particular thanks go to Selina Guinness, an excellent mentor, and Sinéad Garrigan Mattar, who read sections of this work with care and grace. To a list of others involved along the way – Sarah Broom, Euton Daley and Pegasus Theatre, Ed Gaughan, Barry Keane, Peter Lanyon, Marian Pocock, Steven Porter, Jess Shaw, Alon Shoval – thank you.

Finally, the pages which follow are yet another instalment in my longstanding conversation with Wes Williams. Without him, without his careful, critical reading, it would have been an unimaginable journey.