Imperial Voices and Echoes in ‘Punch’: Periodical/Parodical Poetry and the British Empire

‘Punch, or The London Charivari’ and its many imitations across the British Empire and beyond have been approached by scholars from various angles. A number of content analyses of the long-lived London ‘Punch’ have specifically explored its commentary on nineteenth-century imperial issues and events, the emphasis largely being on the role played by the political cartoon. While the verse has also received some scholarly attention, it has rarely been discussed for its multivocal contribution to the construction or deconstruction of British imperialist ideology. Taking its cue from recent advances in the study of Victorian periodical poetry, my paper sets out to revisit ‘Punch’ and shed more light on its many-voiced poetic engagement with the British Empire and its literature. To this end, I discuss both original and parodic verse published within ‘Punch’ issues approximately in the years 1841 to 1900, showing how the same periodical expresses ideological ambivalence towards the imperial enterprise. Thus, I use a canonical metropolitan magazine as a case study to challenge those historians who have downplayed the cultural significance of the versification of imperial themes in Great Britain throughout most of the nineteenth century and argue for the relevance of periodical poetry to the study of British imperial literary culture in the period