Maiden Speech Research Articles

Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form (review)

Questions of Possibility:Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form Willard Spiegelman Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form. David Caplan . Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. viii + 165. $35.00 (cloth). The wars among rival poetic factions in the U.S. raged more fiercely a decade ago than they do now, but David Caplan's judicious, sensible, and perceptive study of poetic form is as welcome and important today as it might have been during the so-called culture wars. In this maiden speech, a revision of the author's doctoral dissertation, Caplan takes on the problems of tradition and inherited forms, and the ways in which a quite various selection of contemporary poets have handled their inheritance. Between a wise introduction that sets the terms and categories of his argument, and an equally wise conclusion ("Prosody After the Poetry Wars"), Caplan sets himself the task of examining the contemporary scene with specific reference to four traditional poetic forms: the sestina, the ghazal (a recent import to the States although long established in Islamic culture), the sonnet, and the ballad, as well as the heroic couplet (this last not so much a form as a style for other forms). The sanity of Caplan's argument and analyses is bolstered by the surprising catholicity of his taste. Rather than allying himself with the so-called "new formalists," a self-appointed band [End Page 597] of semi-reactionaries who have felt for several decades that only a return to metrical verse will signal a return to poetic essence, he picks as his main subjects for review the work of people often quite unlike one another. The first chapter ("The Age of the Sestina") has the usual suspects: Elizabeth Bishop, Anthony Hecht, Rita Dove, and Donald Justice—a fairly conventional choice of sestina-writers. Then the surprises begin. "The Ghazal in America" focuses on Adrienne Rich, Jim Harrison, Agha Shahid Ali—the late Indian-Kashmiri-American poet who popularized the form during the past decade—and several younger poets whom Ali included in his 2000 anthology of the ghazal (Ravishing DisUnities): John Haag, Heather McHugh, Daniel Hall, and Carole Stone. The chapter on the sonnet wonderfully treats the experiments in this once-dismissed form by gay poets (Marilyn Hacker, Henri Cole, and Rafael Campo), and thereby proves that a conventional poetics, at the hand of a gay poet, can become a radical or transformative act. In discussing the couplet ("Why Not the Heroic Couplet?" indeed!), Caplan skirts the predictable James Merrill, focusing instead on Thom Gunn, Derek Walcott, and Derek Mahon, none of whom (interestingly and importantly) is a native American. Looking at the ballad, Caplan includes the traditional Dana Gioia, and X. J. Kennedy, a man always associated as a father figure to the new formalists, but he also considers Rosemary Waldrop and the African-Americans Dudley Randall and Marilyn Nelson, as well as the left-leaning Charles Bernstein who has always eschewed aesthetic and political conservatism as being somehow equivalent. Caplan's summary of Bernstein's own "Rivulets of the Dead Jew" epitomizes his broadmindedness: "When Bernstein uses metrical verse forms familiar to the English literary history, he generally parodies them. His most interesting poems, though, draw an oddly moving resonance from the forms they mock" (120). Imitation, in other words, is indeed a form of flattery. This book succeeds on both the local and the more general level. It is a sign of Caplan's sanity and literary acumen that he can be both lucid and provocative at once. The book has a persuasive rhythm to it—ebbing and flowing between historical and theoretical speculation on one hand, and astute close readings on the other. The author begins by re-examining, and persuasively refuting, the various claims put forth over the past fifty years (and going back still further to Williams and Pound) that try to equate poetic formalism with political repression or social irrelevancy. He says that "our current understanding of poetic forms, especially contemporary metrical verse remains inadequate" (9–10), and, although he doesn't quote it, he would agree with Wallace Stevens's famous pronouncement that "all poetry is experimental," not merely that which...

Le Grand Oral De Dominique De Villepin

Dominique de Villepin's Maiden Speech: This article analyzes the last 26 maiden parliamentary speeches (« déclarations de politique générale ») of French prime ministers since that of J. Chirac, given on 5 June 1974, to that of Dominique de Villepin, on 8 June 2005. This corpus represents 181,094 lexical forms, representing 2,074 distinct forms. A statistical table is constructed by cross-tabulating the 2,074 lexical forms as the lines and the 26 speeches as the columns to do a factorial correspondence analysis of the data. The resulting graph allows us to situate, in a chronological manner, each of the maiden speechs given by a French prime minister from 1974 to today.

Pauline Hanson's One Nation: Extreme Right, Centre Party or Extreme Left?

To what extent do writings about Pauline Hanson or One Nation construct her or her party as a phenomenon of the Right, the Centre or the Left? To what sorts of values - Left or Right - did her major speeches mostly appeal? And where did electors, both those who voted for One Nation and those who did not, place the party ideologically? This article shows how Hanson's politics were frequently characterised as a politics of the Right, though what sort of Right - extreme Right, populist Right, plain Right, and so on - was a matter on which there was no agreement. It demonstrates that while her maiden speech in 1996 and the speech she gave to launch her party in 1997 focused on issues of race and ethnicity - Aborigines, migrants, and multiculturalism - in ways that have come to be associated with the Right, the speech she gave to launch her party's 1998 federal election campaign focused on jobs, an issue more often associated with the Left. The study also uses survey evidence to show that while One Nation as less likely than the Liberal or National Party to be seen as a party of the Right, respondents were more likely to see One Nation as a party of the extreme Right. Yet more than any other party, including the Greens, One Nation was also seen as a party of the extreme Left. The least commonly held view - except by One Nation respondents - was that One Nation was a party of the Centre.

King James's Civic Pageant and Parliamentary Speech in March 1604

Near the end of a speech to his first Parliament (19 March 1604), James makes a rhetorical move, disingenuous and shrewd. He offers an excuse “in case you have not found such Eloquence in my Speech, as peradventure you might have looked for at my hands. I might, if I list, alledge the great weight of my Affaires and my continuall businesse and distraction, that I could never have leasure to thinke upon what I was to speake, before I came to the place where I was to speak.” Because James has had almost a year since being named King of England to contemplate his maiden speech to Parliament, we may take his “excuse” as special pleading. Clearly his strategy nicely reinforces the obvious eloquence of the speech; indeed, hearers may marvel all the more at the quality of the speech, given James's apparent lack of leisure to prepare it. James cannot, however, offer a compelling case for lack of time to write this important, initial speech to Parliament; in fact, his own care as a writer argues against this. But if, for the sake of argument, we take him seriously, where might James easily and readily have gotten the major ideas and themes of the speech (beyond his own obvious writings)? I answer that he could have found them in the magnificent royal entry pageant in his honor that occurred only four days (15 March) before the speech to Parliament. Most of the ideas that inform James's speech find some kind of dramatic representation in the pageant. Indeed, I will argue that the pageant and Parliament speech form a continuous event, designed to honor, instruct, and celebrate the king. These two events constitute the most important public events of James's early English reign and therefore make an exceptional claim for historical significance. In order to reach Westminster and Parliament, James must first figuratively and literally pass through London's civic pageant.

The Luddite Rebellion

The Midland framework-knitters the advent and escalation of Luddism local responses and government reactions Yorkshire climax rumour and repression Gravenor Henson and the Framework-Knitters' Union trials and tribulations Midland denouement the aftermath hidden agenda?. Appendices: letter from Revd John T. Becher to the Home Office Lord Byron's maiden speech in the House of Lords, 27 February 1812 proclamation by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Regent of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the name and on behalf of His Majesty.

Asians in Australia: Patterns of Migration and Settlement.

Introduction to the issuesThe issue of Asian immigration has recently been the subject of significantnpublic debate in Australia, following remarks during the 1996 Australian electionnand subsequent comments by the now member for Oxley, Pauline Hanson.nWhile conceived before this debate began, this book aims to provide some ofnthe basic infoimation required for arational discussion about Asian immigration,ninformation which is clearly absent from much of the current public discourse.Large-scale permanent migration to Australia from Asian countries is anrelatively recent phenomenon. Following local opposition to the influx ofnmainly Chinese immigrants during the Gold Rush in the second half of thennineteenth century, Australia chose to effectively close its doors on migrantsnfrom Asia for almost three-quarters of a century, through implementation ofnwhat has become known as the 'White Australia' policy. While there arenAustralians of Asian descent reaching back four or five generations, theirnnumbers are relatively small. It was not until Australia's acceptance ofnIndochinese refugees in the late 1970s and early 1980s that large numbers ofnAsians were allowed to settle permanently in Australia, although attitudesntowards Asian immigration have been less clear.The changes to Australia's immigration policies and programs in the laten1960s and early 1970s, intended to move Australia towards a non-raciallyndiscriminatory policy, were brought about with the support of the majority ofnthe Australian people. However, since the early 1980s, public opinion pollsnhave shown increasing opposition to current levels of immigration, believingnthem to be too high, even though they were in fact much lower than in thenimmediate postwar years.Why has this opposition to current immigration levels occurred? An opinionnpoll of over 2000 people, conducted by AGB McNair in June 1996, supportednwhat many commentators have been saying: that people connect immigrationnwith their own vulnerability in the workplace. Of the 65 per cent of respondentsnwho thought immigration levels were too high, almost three-quarters gavenunemployment as their main reason (Betts 1996:12). During the major periodnof high immigration levels, from the late 1940s through to the early 1970s,nAustralia had close to full employment. New migrants were not therefore seen as a threat to people's livelihoods. This has clearly changed.The poll did not show people to be specifically against Asian immigration.nSignificantly, only 7 per cent of respondents in the survey gave 'too manynAsians' as their main reason for opposition to the current level of immigration.nIn response to a further question in the same poll, over three-quarters ofnrespondents (77 per cent) believed that Australia should have a nondiscriminatorynimmigration policy (Betts 1996:12). However, views on talkbacknradio following Pauline Hanson's maiden speech in September appear toncontradict the poll results. Which measure of public opinion is more accuratenis hard to say. There is certainly a level of public unease regarding the 'Asianisation' of Australian society. Nancy Viviani believes one reason fornthis is a deep-seated threat mentality among Australian, a fear that differencesnin 'race' pose a threat to Australian values, and a fear of military invasion fromnAsia (Viviani 1996: 7). Both of these positions have featured in the currentndebate, although the former has been more prominent. n n n n

‘Just an ordinary Australian’: Self‐categorization and the discursive construction of facticity in ‘new racist’ political rhetoric

Australia has recently witnessed the resurgence of what has been termed the ‘race debate’. The apparently high levels of popular support from ‘ordinary’ Australians for MP Pauline Hanson's contentious views on immigration, Australia's indigenous peoples and her foreign relations have been a major theme of this debate. This paper employs the framework of discursive psychology to examine, in her maiden speech to Parliament, the way in which Pauline Hanson's political rhetoric is precisely constructed in order to emphasize the ordinariness, reasonableness and commonsensical mass appeal of her views. Particular attention is paid to the discursive deployment of self‐categorization to construct a version of herself as exemplifying ‘ordinary Australian‐ness’. The potential for recent work in discursive psychology both to complement and to challenge aspects of social identity theory inspired studies of political rhetoric is discussed. The analysis presented suggests that not only is it unnecessarily reductionistic to construe identity in talk in terms of dichotomous mental states, but also that the discursive construction of self‐ and social categories, and the establishing of the facticity of a position, need not be construed as separate aspects of the task of racist political rhetoric, but may be understood as mutually supporting components of successful mobilization discourse.

District nurse MP focuses on plight of elderly people in maiden speech

District nurse MP focuses on plight of elderly people in maiden speech

Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937): The man and his diary letters

‘Poor old Austen!’ Leo Amery wrote three days before Chamberlain's death. ‘He just missed greatness and the highest position, but his was a fine life of honourable public service. His real weakness was his over anxiety for good form which he was sometimes inclined to identity too much with loyalty’. In many respects Amery's brief epitaph is typical of so many assessments of this ostensibly so simple but supremely enigmatic figure. There could be no denying Austen Chamberlain's distinguished career. He sat in the House of Commons for an unbroken period of forty-five years. It was a career that truly represented a ‘link with time’. Among the many tributes after his death, Lloyd George had reminded the Commons that Joseph Chamberlain had been congratulated on his son's maiden speech by Gladstone, a leader who himself had been first elected in the year of the Great Reform Act and first served under Peel. As one MP recalled of the occasion, ‘The younger Members felt that they had been carried back through Lloyd George to Gladstone away to the battles of the Reform Bill and the administration of the Duke of Wellington’. Of his almost half a century in the Commons, Chamberlain spent over twenty-two years holding ministerial office. In 1895, at the age of only 32, he became Civil Lord to the Admiralty. Thirty-six years later in his last ministerial position he returned to his ‘first love’ as First Lord in the same department. In the interim, he held all the great offices of State except that of Prime Minister and Home Secretary. Rising from Postmaster-General, he served twice as Chancellor of the Exchequer and once as Foreign Secretary. He was also a member of Lloyd George's War Cabinet and held the India Office. Even at the age of 72 many still saw him as the obvious candidate for the Foreign Office after Hoare's forced resignation in December 1935. By any standard, this was a remarkable ministerial and parliamentary career.

Will I like it the first time?

Abstract. The initial speeches of MPs entering the British House of Commons from 1966 to 1970 were analyzed to ascertain the extent to which they complied with the prevailing myth of behaviour appropriate for maiden speeches. Rituals of style ‐ hesitancy, brevity, and humility ‐were challenged more sharply than were those of substance ‐ references to one's predecessor and one's constituency and being non‐contentious. Despite widespread violation of the various norms, few new MPs defied the folkways across the board. Although a new breed of MP ‐ young, well‐educated, and professionally oriented ‐ was entering the Commons at this time, such MPs did not prove to be the principal source of challenges to the folkways. Iconoclastic MPs tended to have less durable careers than did those MPs more acceptant of tradition. But neither Labour nor Conservatives penalized deviants by denying them positions in the Government. In the absence of sanctions, new Members complied with the myth only when the code of acceptable behaviour appeared to help the Commons function effectively and when new Members were not being singled out for discriminatory treatment.

The Maiden Speeches of New Zealand Women Members of Parliament

(1983). The Maiden Speeches of New Zealand Women Members of Parliament. Political Science: Vol. 35, Studies in Political Behaviour: Elections, Groups and the New Zealand Parliament, pp. 229-266.

It's people who matter

In his maiden speech in the House of Lords 15 years ago my father said:

Bernadette Devlin's maiden speech: A rhetoric of sacrifice

In the riotous spring of 1969, Bernadette Devlin, the young newly elected M.P. from Ulster, delivered her maiden speech in Parliament. This study examines that speech and its relationship to problems in northern Ireland, both past and present.

China and the Palestinians

Only an insider Palestinian or Chinese would be able to tell the fiull story of the intimate relationship between the Palestinian resistance movement and the People's Republic of China, a relationship which has important implications for the world as well as for the Middle East. But in the present state of evidence an outside analyst may venture some basic observations and conclusions. First of all, it is clear that Peking, from its new global vantage point in the United Nations, and the important Middle East diplomatic and logistical base it has acquired through its decision to open an embassy in Beirut, is determined not to appear as just another superpower, manipulating Palestinian hopes and aspirations to its own advantage. Chiao Kuan-hua, chief Chinese delegate to the United Nations, spelled this out in his maiden speech in New York in the autumn of 1971:

In Parliament

In a notable maiden speech in the House of Lords on the Science and Technology Bill, Lord Brown said that a threat existed to the ‘wedding’ of science and technology. Science was now regarded in our universities as a more or less respectable branch of learning, but the same could not yet be said of its technological partner. For example, the output of graduate mechanical engineers fell by over 600 from 1960 to 1962. The number of graduate production engineers passing out from our universities and CATs in 1964 was a mere 64. The White Paper, Cmnd 2146, comments:

Illusion and Reality in India's Foreign Policy

IN a maiden speech in the lower house of the Indian Parliament in August 1963, that maverick of Indian politics, Dr. Rammanohar Lohia, produced a pungent definition of India's foreign policy. 'One minister of this government', he claimed, 'clings to the United States, another to Russia, and the magician tries to hold the balance by his charm. They call this '. It was not a bad definition of India's foreign policy in the twilight of the age of Nehru and it is not without pertinence today, when the magician is dead and his apprentice, Lal Bahadur Shastri, is trying desperately to make some of the old spells work once again. But the quality of spells, like foreign policies and gourmet dishes, depends very much upon the availability of the essential ingredients. From India's point of view, some of the most important have disappeared altogether since 1962. In spite of this, there still seems to remain among Nehru's successors a touching, and perhaps naive, faith in the legacy of the master. Mr. Shastri and his ministers repeat the incantatory word 'non-alignment' with increasing frequency as they come to recognise the complexity of India's foreign relations. In his first public speech as Prime Minister last June, Mr. Shastri affirmed that ' non-alignment will continue to be the fundamental basis of our approach to world problems and our relations with other countries'. When he arrived in London in December 1964 for talks with the British Prime Minister, he went even further and reiterated that there would be ' no deviation' from the lines of policy laid down by Mr. Nehru. This would be all very well if these lines had any clear definition, which they have not, or if ' non-alignment' meant something more than just the absence of formal treaties of alliance between India and other countries. 'Non-alignment' is no longer the dirty word it was in the time of John Foster Dulles, but its rise to respectability has made it no more meaningful of definition. This is partly the fault of its creator, who obscured it with the diffuse rhetoric so characteristic of his later years, but it is mainly attributable to the legion of commentators, both journalistic and academic, who have sought to erect a whole ideological system around its slender core. The original premises upon which 'nonalignment' was founded, however, were sensible and precise and-for the very reason that they no longer exist-it is worth clearing away some

Gladstone and Jamaica

Early in his political life the famous British statesman, W. E. Gladstone, had close contact with colonial problems. His maiden speech in the House of Commons, June 3, 1833, was a defense of his father against charges that slaves were mistreated on the Gladstone plantations in Demerara; his first government post was that of Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for the Colonies; before the end of the 1830's he had served on many committees which studied questions relating to the colonies; and in 1846 he was Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. In 1835 and again in 1849 he drafted pamphlets on the British colonial empire; by mid-nineteenth century he was a leading advocate of colonial self-government; and his speech “Our Colonies” at Chester, November 12, 1855 (published as a pamphlet), was a clear statement of his creed that “ freedom and voluntaryism ” should govern the relationship between Britain and the overseas portions of the British Empire. While in later years noncolonial issues received most of his attention, he never abandoned his faith in freedom as the basic remedy for intra-imperial problems. In the closing years of his political career he fought magnificently but vainly to apply that principle of freedom (which had stilled colonial discontent) to the age-old Irish question.

Cohen of Birkenhead's Maiden Speech before the House of Lords

Cohen of Birkenhead's Maiden Speech before the House of Lords Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume XIII, Issue 4, October 1958, Pages 539-b–543, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XIII.4.539-b Published: 01 October 1958

Sheridan's maiden speech: Indictment by anecdote

Sheridan's maiden speech: Indictment by anecdote

Scientific Utilisation of Coal

THE economic production of liquid fuel and other products from coal is a subject which has received wide publicity. It formed the theme of Lord Rutherfords maiden speech delivered in the House of Lords a little more than two years ago, when as chairman of the Advisory Council of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research he outlined the position and its prospects. Later in the same year Dr. C. H. Lander, then director of fuel research for the same Department, gave an informative Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution (see NATURE, April 30 and May 7, 1932), in which he gave figures showing the technical and economic aspects of the problem. It is of interest to note that the Miners Federation also has the matter under consideration. At the final session on July 7 of the annual conference at Scarborough of the Federation, Mr. Sadler, of South Wales, moved a resolution urging the Trade Union Congress and the Labour party to press the Government to provide capital for establishing on an industrial basis the extraction of oil and by-products from coal. Coal, he said, made Great Britain the workshop of the world, and he asked the Conference to be prepared to make use of all the aid that science can give in utilising coal. Mr. Peter Lee (president) stated that he wanted to see coal used instead of oil wherever possible, but he emphasised also the importance of the scientific use of coal, adding that the Miners Federation is fully aware of the possibilities. Mr. Sadlers resolution was adopted.