(Un)settling the Irish emigrant identity: representation and construction of an Irish emigrant/exile identity in the travel narratives of Kathleen Nevin and William Bulfin

Through an examination of the travel works of William Bulfin, Tales of the Pampas (1900) and Kathleen Nevin's You'll Never Go Back this paper considers the representation of the Irish in Argentina and the contribution of these narratives in the construction of identity and the reconstruction of the emigrant identity into an exilic one. Escaping one colonial framework (Britain/Ireland), travelling to and writing from within another postcolonial construct (Argentina and the Spanish Empire), this paper analyses how Bulfin and Nevin use language as a tool to construct, and even invent, an Irish identity. This identity is inextricably linked to home and the desire to return there. Despite this desire, Argentina becomes internalised to some extent, which in Bulfin can be seen in the mix of the Spanish, English and Irish languages in his stories, highlighting that the Irish were doing with language what they had already done with their lives; trying to adapt it to their new situation. In Nevin, the contrast between us and them (Irish and 'Native') demonstrates her attempts to shape an exilic rather than emigrant mentality. Through these texts I analyse how Argentina never quite becomes a new home, but a place where Irish identity is played out and acquires form.

Magna Charta and Parliament 1900-1914

In 1915 plans for the celebration of the 700th anniversary of Magna Carta had to be dropped following the outbreak of the First World War. Such celebrations marked a sense of Magna Carta as an event in the history of these islands. The usage of the term Magna Carta in Parliament in the run-up to the First World War, however, shows that its granting was not seen only as a significant historical event to be memorialised. During the period from 1900, opening with war in South Africa and ending in 1914 with war throughout Europe, the Great Charter was mentioned 85 times in Parliament. As a period marked by a lengthy constitutional crisis in 1909-11 and beset with problems in Ireland and the Empire, this seems like a good case study period to choose. This short paper attempts to analyse how and why it was invoked in Parliament in the years and what these various usages tell us about how Magna Carta was understood at the time.