scholarly journals Poetic Utterances and Socio-Political Commitment in Ọbasa’s Poems

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Lere Adeyemi

Yorùbá literary critics such as Olabimtan (1974a), Fo ̣ lọ runs ̣ ọ (1998), among ̣ others, have classified D. A. Obasá as a unique colonial poet whose poems ̣ were committed to the promotion of Yorùbá cultural heritage. Tus, a lot of critical works that exist on Obasa’s poems largely concentrate on the cultural ̣ and the philosophical dimensions with little or no focus on the socio-political commitment of the poet. The objective of this study therefore, was to examine the socio-political commitment of Obasa and his poetic utterances. The research methodology is descriptive. It is a corpus study or content analysis of the poetry books. Poems that are relevant to socio-political issues in the three books (Ìwé Kinni Awon Akéwì, ̣ Ìwé Kejì Awon Akéwì and ̣ Ìwé Kéta ̣ Àwoṇ Akéwì) were analyzed within the theory of Nativism. The major findings of the study were that: the selected poems have diverse socio-political themes as related to traditional politics, colonial politics, Yorùbá civil wars, first world war, migration and the need to remember one’s home or country; some of the poems were used as viable tool for political education; while others were essentially to ignite political consciousness in the readers. The paper concluded that Obasá was a committed poet who used his poetic utterances to disseminate, analyze, and educate the readers on the socio-political climate of colonial days. His non-violence ideological position in resolving socio-political issues is in consonance with the theory of Nativism and it is recommended for modern Yorùbá society and other African societies.

Author(s):  
Stefan Samerski

Abstract As nuncio in Munich and Berlin, Eugenio Pacelli had dealt with political issues far beyond the usual scope of his nunciatures. The Papal Secretary of State entrusted him with concordat negotiations with various European countries as well as with foreign policy issues of international significance. This was due not only to Pacelliʼs special expertise but also to the period of major upheaval during and after the First World War and Berlinʼs key geopolitical position as a hub linking the East and the West. It is therefore not surprising that in the papal representative’s correspondence, the Soviet question, as well as the immediate consequences of the Paris Peace Conference, were the clear focal points of his international attention.


2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Keelan

One-time Liberal Member of Parliament, Henri Bourassa (1868-1952) was also a member of the Quebec provincial legislature, French Canadian nationalist and editor of Le Devoir from 1910 to 1932. His enduring career lasted over five decades, during which he discussed a wide range of domestic and political issues. During the First World War, historians have traditionally acknowledged his powerful domestic presence, such as over French language rights, the Conscription Crisis of 1917, or during the Easter riots of 1918. As a result, few scholars have commented on his broad-ranging and critical analyses of the international situation in Europe. This article uses Bourassa’s discussion of the various peace proposals during the war to better understand his ability to engage and understand complex international events. It examines his reaction to the German peace proposal of December 1916, President Wilson’s peace note of December 1916, Lord Lansdowne’s letter of November 1917 and the Papal peace initiatives. It concludes that although Bourassa was greatly influenced by his Catholic religious beliefs, he ultimately displayed an intelligent understanding of the war that far exceeded many other contemporary Canadian observers.


Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parker

Edna St. Vincent Millay occupies an uncomfortable position in relation to modernism. In the majority of criticism, her work is considered the antithesis to modernist experimentation: as representative of the ‘rearguard’ that rejected vers libre in favour of fixed poetic forms. Indeed, most critics concur that whilst Millay’s subject matter may have been modern and daring—voicing women’s sexual independence, for instance—her form was decidedly traditional. Millay also troubles notions of modernist impersonality by writing seemingly autobiographical lyrics that showcase feminine emotions. In this paper, I aim to challenge this view of Millay by focussing on the two avant-garde works that mark the outset and the zenith of her career: Aria da Capo (1921) and Conversation at Midnight (1937). These works are both formally innovative, blurring the boundaries between poetry and drama, causing Edmund Wilson to complain that Millay had “gone to pieces”. Moreover, both works engage in performances of masculinity, with women all but absent. Aria da Capo, first performed by the Provincetown Players in 1919, dramatizes the conflict between two shepherds as an allegory for the First World War. Conversation ventriloquises an all-male dinner party, ranging through the political issues of the Depression era and foreshadowing the war to come. I use both works to argue that Millay has a more interesting relationship to masculinity and modernism than has been hitherto captured by critics. Millay voices men in innovative ways, radically challenging constructions of both gender and poetic form in the process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-122
Author(s):  
Malcolm Bangor-Jones

Syre in Strathnaver was one of a small number of land purchase schemes undertaken by the Congested Districts Board set up by the Conservative government. Following a protracted negotiation with the Duke of Sutherland with interventions by the local crofters and the Sutherland County Council, 23 settlers took up holdings in 1901. They experienced difficulties not only in paying for the sheepstock but also in repaying the purchase money and loans advanced for buildings. In a changed political climate the settlers petitioned to be rent-paying tenants under the crofting legislation which was eventually granted in 1912. Syre was considered an expensive failure as a land-purchase scheme although agriculturally it was a success. A change in the way Syre was regarded by politicians came during the First World War.


1980 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Kennedy

BEFORE THE FIRST WORLD WAR HENRI BERGSON HAD PUBlished three major works, but nothing exclusively or even primarily concerned with social and political issues. Nevertheless, Bergson's philosophy was thought to have a political meaning that could be deduced from its principles. Despite their different, even contradictory, conclusions about it, Bergson's philosophy influenced several leading figures in France – Georges Sorel, Charles Péguy, Charles Maurras and Charles de Gaulle – and through them the course of French history. Significantly, Bergson's philosophical arguments interested them more than his relatively minor, but concrete, statements about contemporary politics. Bergson's mature thought on moral and political life was shaped principally by the First world War: Les Deux sources de la moral et de la religion appeared after Sorel and Péguy were dead and when Maurras and the Action Franqaise no longer figured so prominently in French politics. Even de Gaulle, who came to prominence much later than the others and who really belongs more to the second half of the century than they do, appears to have taken no interest in Les Deux sources. Rather, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience and L'Évolution créatrice in which Bergson states his critique of ‘conceptual thinking’ and his theories of consciousness and biological evolution, comprise ‘Bergsonism’ in politics – not Bergson's own politics. These ironically find no consistent representation in the movements or political theories discussed below. The difference between what Bergson stood for and favoured in politics and what others thought his philosophy implied for politics is most striking and points to the difficulties inherent in taking practical advice from metaphysical arguments. There are, then, two problems surrounding Bergson's influence in France, one of which has already been alluded to and will be discussed at some length. The other is much more diffuse, but defines Bergson's political reputation today.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 188-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vedran Duančić

The article examines the involvement of Yugoslav geographers in the multifaceted process of constructing the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes between the final stage of the First World War and the mid-1920s, when Yugoslavia’s external boundaries and internal arrangement were temporarily settled. Researchers have recognized Jovan Cvijić as the leading scientist behind the political-geographical legitimation of the newly created Yugoslav state. This article, however, examines the role of two hitherto neglected Yugoslav geographers—the Slovene Anton Melik and the Croat Filip Lukas—in the process of constructing the Yugoslav national space. This process, in fact, only intensified after the 1918 publication of Cvijić’s seminal work La Péninsule balkanique. Whereas Cvijić aimed at an international readership, the construction of Yugoslav national space by Croat and Slovene geographers was primarily a domestic enterprise; these were geographies of Yugoslavia by Yugoslav geographers, narrating Yugoslavia to Yugoslav readership. For a period, scholars from Ljubljana and Zagreb rather than Belgrade influenced the project of the geographical narration of Yugoslavia, and approached the pressing contemporary political issues in geographical works in a manner that revealed both connections and tensions between discourses of “center” and “periphery.”


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