Avian Encounters and Moral Sentiment in Poetry from Eighteenth-Century Ireland

Abstract

In writing from eighteenth-century Ireland there is evidence of sustained and varied reflection on the relationship between humans and the natural world. Animal life had long been a subject for both literary and artistic representation in Ireland, but at this time—due to a complex intersection of ethical and scientific enquiries—poets and artists began to re-examine the unequal relationship between man and animal, and to consider its implications for issues of religious belief and social justice. The representation of birds, in particular, prompted poets to combine moral and philosophical questions with attention to specific Irish contexts. The importance of moral sentiment—even in poems that celebrate the beauty and freedom of songbirds, and the landscapes that sustain them—reveals the complex philosophical foundation of these works and the extent to which even conventional representations are inflected by contemporary intellectual developments.