This page was created by Ellen Rethwisch.  The last update was by Ben Deetz.

Star of the Sea : A Postcolonial/Postmodern Voyage into the Irish Famine

Cork Examiner

The Cork Examiner operated as a national paper in Ireland and the selections are comprised of letters to the editor. The selections are sometimes graphic and very blatantly and matter-of-factly describe just how dire the circumstances were in Ireland during the famine. In addition, looking at letters to the editor rather than an article or cartoon allows for the voices of a variety of Irish to speak directly to a mass audience without editing or tampering with their messages. We can assume that the people writing to the editor were thinking of a focus either nationally or regionally, not globally, when writing their letters describing situations in Ireland. While the letters to the editor are the closest media source to the effects of the famine, it’s interesting how the real life stories embedded within the letters manifest themselves first as the perception of the British and in turn into portrayal into political cartoons and depictions.  The events described in the selection of letters to the editor don’t directly correlate to the selection of political cartoons from the British media, but nonetheless the variance in perception of issues within Ireland expressed in various forms of media is somewhat alarming when a global context is taken into account. 

Work Cited
Taylor, Steve. "Views of the Famine." Views of the Famine. Wordpress, n.d. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. 
Researcher/Writer: Ben Deetz
Technical Designers: Abbey Benson and Ellen Rethwisch

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