Mother England, mother Ireland: National allegory and maternal authority in Anglo-Irish literature and culture, 1880--1922

"Mother England, Mother Ireland" proposes a new way of reading allegories of nation-building and national identity in Anglo-Irish literature at the end of the nineteenth century. I argue that authors who claimed affiliations with both England and Ireland (Maud Gonne, Lady Augusta Gregory, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde) exploited the capacity of allegory to infiltrate a range of genres and, in doing so, discovered hidden potential in the links between motherhood and motherland. Examining nonfiction, novels, drama, speeches, and public spectacles, I show how these writers adapted allegorical representations of Ireland as a mother not only to confront Ireland's vexed political and cultural relationship with England, but also to explore cross-cultural links between Ireland and Britain's outlying colonies.