Absentee

Abstract: This essay offers a survey of the political, economic, and literary fortunes of the term "absentee" from its Anglo-French medieval and early English origins to contemporary international usages, paying particular attention to its deployments with reference to Ireland. The essay traces the term's emergence in English legal discourse dealing with English feudal magnates awarded large estates in Ireland who preferred to live in England, and follows with subsequent uses with reference to the Ulster Plantation. It deals also with disputations over "absenteeism" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and concludes with engagements with absenteeism in Maria Edgeworth's novels and Daniel Corkery's criticism.