From the ancient past of Chapter 3, this chapter moves to the account of contemporary American travelers through the ruins and remnants of the ancient Roman world. Starting with Jhumpa Lahiri’s period living in Rome, and touching also on Thomas Jefferson’s account of antique ruins over two hundred years before, the chapter uses the potent image of the “ruin”—both as noun and as verb—to read American travelers in Europe as observers of empire’s recursive temporalities. Closer examinations of travel writing by William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, Eleanor Clark, and Margaret Fuller reveal the ways in which the contemporary moment for each of these writers ends up filtered through the liberal observing subject via their confrontation with the materiality of an ancient empire, collectively registering the analogical history that the ruins of empire inculcate within the landscape.
This essay analyses J.M. Synge's construction of domestic and institutional space in his debut play The Shadow of the Glen. The Richmond Asylum and Rathdrum Union Workhouse, the two institutions of confinement which are mentioned in the play, are seen as playing important roles in constructing a threatening offstage space beyond the cottage walls. The essay reads Nora's departure from the home at the end of the play as an eviction into this hostile environment, thereby challenging the dominant interpretation of The Shadow as a woman's choice between her home and the road. By drawing on historical research and Synge's travel writing to delineate contemporary attitudes towards the asylum and the workhouse, the essay aims to provide a deeper understanding of the play's dynamics of place.
