The Politics of Comparison: Romance at the Edges of Europe

Abstract

This piece offers a comparative reading of the early novel – and the ways in which it has been described – in Polish and Irish literature. Contesting accounts that both traditions ‘fail’ to develop realism because they cleave uncritically to romance, it examines the generic hybridity of Lady Morgan’s TheWild Irish Girl and Maria Wirtemberska’s Malwina, czyli domyślność serca (Malvina, or the Heart’s Intuition). Reading Polish and Irish literature alongside each other allows us to see that neither is the anomaly it often appears to be in literary criticism. It also re-opens the questions of how we make sense of the relationship between literary works and the socio-political contexts they emerge from.