Chad A. B. Wilson
English 2316:
Reading Colonial and Postcolonial Literature
IMPORTANT INFORMATION (1/24/03):
King Solomon's Mines is here! Go buy it now!
The first readings will be for Wednesday, as per the revised (1/22) Plan of Days, but I will introduce it on Monday. Check the Plan of Days link to get a copy. Photocopies of readings for Friday and Monday are still on a desk outside my office. Photocopy them and return them within an hour. You can use the library, Heney building, Social Work building, or the copy center in the UC to make copies.
"Only complete political confusion and naive optimism can prevent the recognition that the unavoidable efforts at trade expansion by all civilized bourgeois-controlled nations, after a transitional period of seemingly peaceful competition, are clearly approaching the point where power alone will decide each nation's share in the economic control of the earth, and hence its people's sphere of activity, and especially its workers' earning potential." -- Max Weber, 1894 (qtd. in Eric Hobsbawn, The Age of Empire, 1875-1914)
"Only on the narrowest definition of imperialism as the explicit advocacy of hte acquistion of new territory can it be said that any major early Victorian writer or politician was anti-imperialist." (Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness 4)
"The postcolonial does not privilege the colonial. It
is concerned with colonial history only to the extent that that
history has determined the configurations and power structures of
the present, to the extent that much of the world still lives in
the violent disruptions of its wake, and to the extent that the
anti-colonial liberation movements remain the source and
inspiration of its politics. If colonial history, particularly in
the nineteenth century, was the history of the imperial
appropriation of the world, the history of the twentieth century
has witnessed the peoples of the world taking pwer and control
back for themselves." (Robert Young, Postcolonialism: An
Historical Introduction 4)
Overview of English 2316
This course is an attempt to link literature and culture through the historical medium of imperialism. The terms can get very tricky, but Robert Young is helpful:
"The term 'empire' has been widely used for many centuries without, however, necessarily signifying 'imperialism'. Here a basic difference emerges between an empire that was bureaucratically controlled by a government from the centre, and which was developed for ideological as well as financial reasons, a structure that can be called imperialism, and an empire that was developed for settlement by individual communities or for commercial purposes by a trading company, a structure that can be called colonial. Colonization was pragmatic and until the nineteenth century generally developed in a haphazard way (for example, the occupation of islands in the West Indies), while imperialism was typically driven by ideology from the metropolitan centre and concerned with the assertion and expansion of state power (for example, the French invasion of Algeria)." (Young 16)
Nineteenth-century Britain was definitely involved in Young's definition of imperialism, including Australia and the South Seas, the "scramble for Africa," dividing up the former Ottoman Empire after the First World War, and, of course, maintaining control of India until 1947. By 1914, Britain controlled over a fifth of the world's land and a quarter of its population.
We will begin our study of imperialism and literature by looking at works written by people in the metropolitan "center," or in Britain itself. (According to most theorists, Britain remains the center and everything else, including its colonies, are the "periphery" or "Other.") H. Rider Haggard is a great place to begin because he was an incredibly popular author, often seen as merely a pulp writer, like the Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele of the nineteenth century. Far from being a "simple" or "harmless" author, however, Haggard's fiction is often praising of the British empire although not blindly so. King Solomon's Mines will help us to see the way one (typical?) British author portrayed the empire. Essays, stories, and poems from Empire Writing will also help us to see how British subjects discussed and debated the "problem" of the British Empire. These British works will also allow us to see the way imperialism was often couched in racialist terms.
For the colonial subject (the person living under British rule in the colonies), the British empire was often seen as the oppressor, the ruler who refused to allow nations to rule themselves. They were often looked down upon by their British rulers, seen as unthinking, stupid, or just incapable of ruling their own countries. Mahfouz's Midaq Alley and Tagore's The Home and the World will allow us to see the colonial subject's view of British imperialism. Both authors were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and both were persecuted for their beliefs. Salmon Rushdie's Midnight's Children offers the contemporary response to empire. Rushdie, an Indian writing in English, writes from the postcolonial perspective on what was perhaps the defining moment of Indian history.
Through these four novels and selections from Empire
Writing, we will gain insight into the colonist's mindset as
well as the colonial subject's view of imperialism. We will even
be able to see the impact that imperialism is still having on the
world.
Links
Plan of Days (with assignments listed) (revised 1/22/03)
Reading Response Questions