The ‘Injunction of Jeremiah’: papal politicking and power in the Middle Ages

Throughout the Middle Ages, the ‘Injunction of Jeremiah’ (Jer. 1:10) was employed by countless ecclesiastical writers. Building on an established tradition, medieval contemporaries began applying the allegory of ‘uprooting and destroying, building and planting’ with an intentionally moral and political message. This article examines the Old Testament call narrative with a view to understanding how and why it served medieval popes and other high-ranked ecclesiastics as a political and rhetorical mechanism for legitimising ecclesiastical authority. It argues for a noticeable and deliberate shift in textual interpretation in the ninth century, after which period medieval popes and influential church figures alike marshalled the Injunction to help strengthen the centralising ideology of Rome and her bishop. The effect, it is concluded, contributed ultimately to reinforcing the papacy's claims to govern spiritual and temporal matters throughout Christian society.     

Grave Marking and Wailing: Ritual Responses to the Babylonian Crisis in Jeremiah’s Poetry (Jer 31, 21)

This article explores Jer 31,15-22, which recapitulates the history of the Babylonian crisis from invasion to exile to manumission. Against traditional “triumphalistic” approaches to this poem that view the restored Israel in its repatriation as a victorious warrior (vv. 21-22), this article argues for a ritual reading of the text. It demonstrates that the need for a ritual response to the Babylonian crisis was so strong that Jeremiah prescribes mourning rites to Judah not only at the time of its demise (v. 15) but also at the time of its manumission from captivity (v. 21). Since the use of laments and other mourning rites in the restoration of “collapse societies” was well attested in the ANE, their appearance in the Book of Consolation as part of the poetic vision of Judah’s reconstitution can also be construed as a socio-religious necessity.     

The technologies of distance: new migrations in Conor O’Callaghan’s The Sun King

This article analyses Conor O’Callaghan’s collection The Sun King as an expression of contemporary migration practices. It places the poet’s technological mobilities within larger global movements and argues that the collection reconfigures poetic versions of migration for the twenty-first century. The Sun King (2013) is located in explicitly transient spaces, while its formal innovations serve to mimeticise contemporary dislocation. In reinventing the dual demands of memory and migration in the postmodern society, The Sun King recognises and pursues alternative poetic possibilities. The article suggests that O’Callaghan’s Twitter-poem “The Pearl Works” can be read as indicative of an expansive impulse towards ephemeral online works. In particular, the article raises questions around composition, stability and memory practices in the digital era, and highlights how both migration and memory are complicated by technological innovations.     

Estranging Ireland: The underground self of the Irish free state in Joseph O’Neill’s Land Under England

Land Under England is an out of print, rarely-cited Irish science fiction novel by the author Joseph O’Neill. Written at a time of crisis in Irish society in the 1930s, the novel has been relatively ignored in studies of the literature of the period. Although critics of science fiction tend to situate the novel as a purely anti-fascist work, taking its cues from events happening in Europe, this article places the novel firmly within its postcolonial Irish context, opening up the text to alternative readings based on the writings of Irish historians, as well as Marxist, cultural materialist and postcolonial critics. The article also utilises documents such as work written by O’Neill in his capacity as a civil servant, letters to the author from the controversial author Francis Stuart, and reviews contemporary to the publication of the novel.     

’Elephants are contagious’: Fintan O'Toole's Ireland

The Lie of the Land: Irish Identities Fintan O'toole, 1998 Dublin, New Island Books pp. 172, ISBN 1.874.597.723, £9.99 (hb)     

Translocational Irish identities in Edna O’Brien’s memoir Country Girl (2012)

A rural-urban exodus subsequently followed by overseas migration has characterised geographical movement in Ireland. While Irish women have outnumbered men in their diaspora, physical and symbolic identification with Ireland has been decisive to the polemic of Irish female migration. This article explores how real and symbolic contradictions in Irish women experiencing displacement are reflected in Edna O’Brien’s memoir Country Girl (2012). Using translocational positionality as an intersectional research framework, the article reveals the importance of spatiality in the ‘life writings’ of a particular situational subject and its major role in identity construction processes. Furthermore, this article relates the individual biography to the collective and complex construction of identity of Irish women abroad in the second half of the twentieth century. The analysis sheds light on many unvoiced experiences shared by female migrants and discloses key aspects of Irish migration that result in a problematic gendered relation with the land still unresolved.     

Correspondence: ‘TLS’ Reviewing

Colonial Leviathan: State Formation in Mid‐Nineteenth Century Canada edited by Allan Greer and Ian Radforth. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Pp. xii + 328. £36.00 (hardback); £14.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–8020–5931–7; 0–8020–6871–5.

True Government by Choice Men? Inspection, Education, and State Formation in Canada West by Bruce Curtis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992. Pp.ix + 250. £36.00 (hardback); £14.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–8020–5967–8; 0–8020–6894–4.

Britain and the Origins of Canadian Confederation, 1837–67 by Ged Martin. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995. Pp.xi + 388. £47.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–333–52288–5.

Ex Uno Plures: Federal‐Provincial Relations in Canada, 1867–1896 by Garth Stevenson. Montreal and Kingston: McGill‐Queen's University Press, 1994. Pp.xi + 401. £38.50 (hardback). ISBN 0–7735–0986–0.     

李大钊:1O岁的新郎

民国时期的包办婚姻,并不是都如鲁迅、徐志摩那样,需要反抗的.革命人士李大钊就不是如此.李大钊10岁那年,就由家人操持完婚了.新娘是大他6岁的乡下少女赵纫兰.     

Chris Naunton: Egyptologists’ Notebooks

African Archaeological Review -