Influence of External Factors on National Identity: Johnson, Boswell, and Edgeworth Kathleen Comar College

The very nature of travel literature is to inform the population that has not traveled abroad to so-called ‘wild’ places of the cultures and people that lie beyond their own nation, specifically, the untraveled English population. Given the rise of imperialism and great desire for global power, it is no surprise that such a movement began, nor that the movement in large part served to support the assertion that England was civilized and refined in a way that the nations it controlled, such as Ireland and Scotland, were not. The context of each novel or journal is shaped by its narrator, as with any work, but the identity of the speaker is especially crucial in understanding the perspective of a traveler on the lands they traveled to. Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui, James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland all provide unique perspectives on the lands under the King’s rule and how each related to one another.

While Edgeworth’s text is fictional, it contains numerous references to a supposedly unbiased editor, who attempts to lend credibility to the stories of the narrator, Lord Glenthorn. Glenthorn is a young English nobleman who travels to Ireland to run an...