Castle Rackrent continued and “Maria Edgeworth in Blackface”

As stated before, these questions are here to serve as a guide. Please feel free to deviate from them, develop your own, respond to another student, or continue our discussion from last week if you would rather. Happy blogging!

• In “Maria Edgeworth in Blackface: Castle Rackrent and the Irish Rebellion of 1798,” Egenolf argues, “Despite the fictional claims of authenticity, Maria Edgeworth in fact appropriates the voice of the native Irish Thady, and thus performs linguistic blackface for her English and Anglo-Irish readers” (849). What is the connection Egenolf is making between minstrelsy and “blackface” and Edgeworth’s use of an Irish “dialect” in her novel? Can you point to places in the novel where you see this kind of performance on the part of Thady Quirk?
• Egenolf drops quite a few names and literary references in this essay, including “Swiftian” and “Spenserian” to describe aspects of Edgeworth’s text. Do a little online research and explore these authors and the nature of their work. You should also feel free to explore any other important figures that Egenolf cites such as Harriet Martineau, Luke Gibbons, Marilyn Butler, or even some of the authors of the many 1798 rebellion narratives discussed in this essay.
• In this past week’s posts, many students discussed the treatment of women in the novel. Let us continue that discussion, paying close attention to how women are constructed in this novel, what role they play in the exploitation of the Irish, and what a “raking pot of tea” can tell us about the secret lives of Irish Ascendancy women.
• Egenolf takes time to analyze several footnotes and end notes in the glossary. In your blog, choose one or two particularly rich footnotes and end notes and do a “close reading” of that note. Wikipedia provides a fairly good definition of “close reading” that you can review here. In a nutshell, close reading is the sustained (and close!) reading of a small passage, paying very careful attention to language as it enfolds word by word, sentence by sentence. Egenolf suggests in her essay that many of these notes are “loaded” with political sentiment and social commentary. By closely reading some of these notes, what sort of tone or attitude does the glossary and/or footnotes betray?
• In anticipation for our reading of the vampire novella Carmilla, take some time to reread the scene where Thady throws a wake for Sir Condy (112-113). What is the significance of this scene, in your opinion? Many scholars have noted the proliferation of the “living dead” in Irish novels (vampires, ghosts, people who come back from the dead [re: Finnegan’s Wake]). What is symbolic of this “living dead” moment in Castle Rackrent? Are there are other places where superstition and the supernatural are “codified” in this novel?