Anachronistic Aesthetics: Maria Edgeworth and the “Uses” of History

Abstract

author Scholars often understand Maria Edgeworth as a belated Enlighten ment writer in a Romantic age because she seeks to organ ize both her fiction and the history it represents so that they can be put to use. In this article, however, I argue that Maria Edgeworth's Irish writing legitimates lived relationships be tween past and present that her politics wished to eradicate. Although she attempts to peri odize within her fiction to shape a useful history-separating past and present in order to bring about an imagined future-her anach ronistic aesthetics un settle her historical periods and show the political value of dis cor dance, contingency, and his torical misuse. Focusing especially on An Essay on Irish Bulls and Castle Rackrent, I consider how Edgeworth's anachronisms imagine political possi bilities that do not simply support either union with England or Irish nation al ism. The heterogeneity created by portable aesthetic forms-whether literary language that tran scends its historical con text or forms of metalepsis that propel readers forward and back ward in time-foster transhistorical rela tion ships that expand our understanding of the present and imagine a more open future.