Richard Murphy’s The God Who Eats Corn: A Colonizer’s Critique of British Imperialism in Ireland and Africa

With the passing of Richard Murphy in 2018, Ireland lost its last poet of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy. Yet his poetry often displays the poet’s sense of unease with his background and features attempts to reconcile Ireland’s colonial history with feelings of guilt and self-consciousness as an inheritor to the gains of the British imperialist project. A dedicatory poem to his aging father who had retired to what was then known as Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), ‘The God Who Eats Corn’ draws parallels between Irish and African colonial experiences. Yet far from celebrating the ‘civilizing’ mission of British imperialism, Murphy deftly challenges and questions the legitimacy of his family legacy. I argue that rather than reinforcing the poet’s image as representative of the Ascendancy class, ‘The God Who Eats Corn’ reveals sympathies with the subject peoples of British imperialism and aligns Murphy with a nationalist narrative of history and conception of ‘native’ identity. For this reason, the poem should be considered a landmark of modern Irish poetics in its articulation of trans-racial anti-colonial solidarity.

British Imperialist and/or Avatar of Welshness?

The WWI recruitment drive in Wales was extraordinarily successful. One strand in the propaganda that encouraged young Welsh men to enlist was the example of Caractacus, the ancient British leader who according to Tacitus had fought against the ancient Romans in Wales and, after capture, had delivered a defiant speech to the Emperor Claudius. Inaugurated by a stage play in Welsh by Beriah Gwynfe Evans, performed at a school in Abergele in 1904, there was an Edwardian craze in Wales for amateur theatrical performances by schoolchildren starring Caractacus. The trend was encouraged by the identification of Lloyd George with the ancient warrior, especially after his ‘People’s Budget’ had won the fervent support of the working classes. Once war was declared, the Caractacus performances in Wales became transparently connected with recruitment, morale, and fund-raising for the war effort. Small Welsh children across the class spectrum were still performing such plays while their elder brothers were dying in the trenches of France.

Unsettled Matters, Falling Flight: Decolonial Protest and the Becoming-Material of an Imperial Statue

A statue of 19th-century British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes sat at the heart of the University of Cape Town’s colonial façade until 9 April 2015, when it was removed after just one month of student protests known as the Rhodes Must Fall movement. The material alterations made to the body of the statue by protesting students unsettled the dominant epistemology of the university and public discourse by exceeding the bounds and logics of representational politics.

Nigeria’s Unity, Development and Civil Society: The Imperative of Good Governance

<em>Before the arrival of the British imperialist, there was no united entity called Nigeria. There was also nothing like political infrastructure known as “regions”. Nigeria comprises of about 250 ethnic groups who were doing things as entity of their own before the British colonizers integrated Nigeria to be one. The merger could be described as “forced union”. The introduction of indirect rule by the British imperial master orchestrated divide and rule in Nigeria, it also gave rise to ethnic consciousness. It is on this backdrop that this study evaluated the role of governance in Nigeria’s unity with a view to identifying the areas of problems. Survey research method was adopted. Data collected through questionnaire were analyzed using</em> <em>Z-test. Myriads of factors were identified as responsible for disunity and separatist agitation in Nigeria. The factors were critically discussed and suggestions proffered. Essentially it is the position of the paper that there should be reduction of scarcity and inequality through revolutionary development. Development which should be predicated on equity and fairness. The rotation of power to ensure that all ethnic groups are given opportunity is also recommended. Also the paper recommended that the emphasis on ethnicity/tribe or place of origin in official forms should be abolished.</em>

Gothic Tales

‘There was a rumour, too, that he was a devil-worshipper, or something of that sort, and also that he had the evil eye…’ Arthur Conan Doyle was the greatest genre writer Britain has ever produced. Throughout a long writing career, he drew on his own medical background, his travels, and his increasing interest in spiritualism and the occult to produce a spectacular array of Gothic Tales. Many of Doyle’s writings are recognised as the very greatest tales of terror. They range from hauntings in the polar wasteland to evil surgeons and malevolent jungle landscapes. This collection brings together over thirty of Conan Doyle’s best Gothic Tales. Darryl Jones’s introduction discusses the contradictions in Conan Doyle’s very public life - as a medical doctor who became obsessed with the spirit world, or a British imperialist drawn to support Irish Home Rule - and shows the ways in which these found articulation in that most anxious of all literary forms, the Gothic.

The Cultural Significance of "Jack and the Beanstalk"

“Jack and the Beanstalk” is a widely known fairy tale with a longstanding tradition of rewrites to fit the cultural norm. Andrew Lang’s version from 1890 is just another such version of the classic story. However, his version has distinct influence from the culture around him at the time, namely those of Marxism and British imperialism mindsets, which were wildly influential at the time. It is within these cultural ideologies that Lang’s Jack exists, as Jack the oppressor and Jack the oppressed. Along with other artifacts of the time, this paper seeks to position Lang’s version against the Marxist and British imperialist influences to paint a full picture of the cultural significance of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Madeline