Douglas Kerr
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099340
- eISBN:
- 9789882206892
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099340.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This is a literary history that examines British writing about the East—centred on India but radiating as far as Egypt and the Pacific—in the colonial and postcolonial period. It takes as its subject ...
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This is a literary history that examines British writing about the East—centred on India but radiating as far as Egypt and the Pacific—in the colonial and postcolonial period. It takes as its subject “the East” that was real to the British imagination, largely the creation of writers who described and told stories about it, descriptions and stories coloured by the experience of empire and its aftermath. The book discusses the work of writers such as Stevenson, Kipling, Conrad, and Orwell, but also covers less-well-known literary authors, including Anglo-Indian romance writing, the reports and memoirs of administrators, and travel writing from Auden and Isherwood in China to Redmond O'Hanlon in Borneo. It produces a history of this writing by looking at a series of “figures” or tropes of representation through which successive writers sought to represent the East and the British experience of it—tropes such as exploring the hinterland, going native, and the figure of rule itself. The book raises issues of identity and representation; power and knowledge; and, centrally, the question of how to represent other people.Less
This is a literary history that examines British writing about the East—centred on India but radiating as far as Egypt and the Pacific—in the colonial and postcolonial period. It takes as its subject “the East” that was real to the British imagination, largely the creation of writers who described and told stories about it, descriptions and stories coloured by the experience of empire and its aftermath. The book discusses the work of writers such as Stevenson, Kipling, Conrad, and Orwell, but also covers less-well-known literary authors, including Anglo-Indian romance writing, the reports and memoirs of administrators, and travel writing from Auden and Isherwood in China to Redmond O'Hanlon in Borneo. It produces a history of this writing by looking at a series of “figures” or tropes of representation through which successive writers sought to represent the East and the British experience of it—tropes such as exploring the hinterland, going native, and the figure of rule itself. The book raises issues of identity and representation; power and knowledge; and, centrally, the question of how to represent other people.
Ezra Mendelsohn
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195112030
- eISBN:
- 9780199854608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195112030.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter examines in detail the English tradition of Jewish extraterritoriality and briefly discusses an historical alternative to this form of writing. It makes the distinction between American ...
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This chapter examines in detail the English tradition of Jewish extraterritoriality and briefly discusses an historical alternative to this form of writing. It makes the distinction between American Jewish and British Jewish writing which can be seen in terms of an opposing relationship to the past. It is argued that the American novel “tends to rest in contradictions and among extreme ranges of experience,” whereas the English novel “gives the impression of absorbing all extremes, all maladjustments and contradictions into a normative view of life.” Ann Masa has shown that this distinction can be applied equally to Jewish literature. The very impossibility of absorbing the Jewish past into a territorial Englishness—or even Britishness—has led to the continuation of a culture of Jewish extraterritoriality.Less
This chapter examines in detail the English tradition of Jewish extraterritoriality and briefly discusses an historical alternative to this form of writing. It makes the distinction between American Jewish and British Jewish writing which can be seen in terms of an opposing relationship to the past. It is argued that the American novel “tends to rest in contradictions and among extreme ranges of experience,” whereas the English novel “gives the impression of absorbing all extremes, all maladjustments and contradictions into a normative view of life.” Ann Masa has shown that this distinction can be applied equally to Jewish literature. The very impossibility of absorbing the Jewish past into a territorial Englishness—or even Britishness—has led to the continuation of a culture of Jewish extraterritoriality.
Owen Dudley Edwards
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748616510
- eISBN:
- 9780748653621
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748616510.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter considers what the early twentieth-century writers told the children the war had done to them, and looks at the interest of the children in the USA after the war, which was something the ...
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This chapter considers what the early twentieth-century writers told the children the war had done to them, and looks at the interest of the children in the USA after the war, which was something the parents wanted to avoid. It considers the status of British and European writing after the war, as well as the emergence of Germanophobia and Naziphobia. The chapter identifies a distrust of Europe that grew along with a new English chauvinism, and the classic wartime crisis which occurs when the child realises that the official Authority is in fact false and destructive of what the child knows it stands for. It also discusses in detail the strip cartoon ‘Tintin’.Less
This chapter considers what the early twentieth-century writers told the children the war had done to them, and looks at the interest of the children in the USA after the war, which was something the parents wanted to avoid. It considers the status of British and European writing after the war, as well as the emergence of Germanophobia and Naziphobia. The chapter identifies a distrust of Europe that grew along with a new English chauvinism, and the classic wartime crisis which occurs when the child realises that the official Authority is in fact false and destructive of what the child knows it stands for. It also discusses in detail the strip cartoon ‘Tintin’.
Rebecca Cole Heinowitz
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638680
- eISBN:
- 9780748651702
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638680.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
This chapter discusses the protection program of the Spanish empire, which effectively replaced the previous annexation plans of Britain. It notes that during the Peninsular War, British writing ...
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This chapter discusses the protection program of the Spanish empire, which effectively replaced the previous annexation plans of Britain. It notes that during the Peninsular War, British writing about Spanish America seemed to turn away from previous works that had expressed sympathy for the Spanish American natives with British imperialism. It then studies several works that concealed Britain's unabated interest in starting commercial dominance in Spanish America. The chapter also considers the question of how to present Britain's emancipation efforts as consistent with their promise to protect the Spanish empire.Less
This chapter discusses the protection program of the Spanish empire, which effectively replaced the previous annexation plans of Britain. It notes that during the Peninsular War, British writing about Spanish America seemed to turn away from previous works that had expressed sympathy for the Spanish American natives with British imperialism. It then studies several works that concealed Britain's unabated interest in starting commercial dominance in Spanish America. The chapter also considers the question of how to present Britain's emancipation efforts as consistent with their promise to protect the Spanish empire.
Douglas Kerr
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099340
- eISBN:
- 9789882206892
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099340.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This introductory chapter discusses the study presented in this book, which examines the relationship formed between British writing and Asian people and places during the colonial period. The ...
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This introductory chapter discusses the study presented in this book, which examines the relationship formed between British writing and Asian people and places during the colonial period. The parameters of the writings that are examined are that they are an Eastern object of representation and a Western modality or point of view. The following chapters are inter-related and represent an incomplete methodological project.Less
This introductory chapter discusses the study presented in this book, which examines the relationship formed between British writing and Asian people and places during the colonial period. The parameters of the writings that are examined are that they are an Eastern object of representation and a Western modality or point of view. The following chapters are inter-related and represent an incomplete methodological project.
Lara Feigel
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748639502
- eISBN:
- 9780748652938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748639502.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book reads between the frames of 1930s literature and cinema, exploring the politics of the engagement (or entanglement) of the two media. The 1930s and 1940s saw the birth and death of a ...
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This book reads between the frames of 1930s literature and cinema, exploring the politics of the engagement (or entanglement) of the two media. The 1930s and 1940s saw the birth and death of a tradition of politically committed filmic British writing which overtly aligned the socialist and the cinematic. It also brings together a wide cross-section of the 1930s Left, allowing Walter Allen, W.H. Auden, and Virginia Woolf to brush shoulders, politically and aesthetically. Moreover, it tries to restore the excitement and hope to the ‘morbid’ inter-war decade. Finally, the chapters included in this book are given.Less
This book reads between the frames of 1930s literature and cinema, exploring the politics of the engagement (or entanglement) of the two media. The 1930s and 1940s saw the birth and death of a tradition of politically committed filmic British writing which overtly aligned the socialist and the cinematic. It also brings together a wide cross-section of the 1930s Left, allowing Walter Allen, W.H. Auden, and Virginia Woolf to brush shoulders, politically and aesthetically. Moreover, it tries to restore the excitement and hope to the ‘morbid’ inter-war decade. Finally, the chapters included in this book are given.
Porscha Fermanis and John Regan
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199687084
- eISBN:
- 9780191766992
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199687084.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century Literature and Romanticism
The introduction rethinks three long-standing narratives about the nature of British historical writing from 1770 to 1845. The first narrative concerns the widely held belief that the relationship ...
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The introduction rethinks three long-standing narratives about the nature of British historical writing from 1770 to 1845. The first narrative concerns the widely held belief that the relationship between history and literature was open and porous, resulting in a period of epistemological innocence marred only by encroaching disciplinary transformations and the increasing professionalization of history. The second narrative relates to the exclusion of literary texts from accounts of the ‘rise of historicism’ and the birth of the modern historical method, despite obvious parallels between the rise of the historical novel and that of a new historical consciousness. The third narrative concerns the characterization of ‘Romantic’ history as a subjective and emotionally charged reaction to philosophic history and other Enlightenment modes of representing the past, thereby eliding a far more varied and complex set of Romantic historiographical agendas and representative practices based on newly expanded definitions of Romanticism and its periodicity.Less
The introduction rethinks three long-standing narratives about the nature of British historical writing from 1770 to 1845. The first narrative concerns the widely held belief that the relationship between history and literature was open and porous, resulting in a period of epistemological innocence marred only by encroaching disciplinary transformations and the increasing professionalization of history. The second narrative relates to the exclusion of literary texts from accounts of the ‘rise of historicism’ and the birth of the modern historical method, despite obvious parallels between the rise of the historical novel and that of a new historical consciousness. The third narrative concerns the characterization of ‘Romantic’ history as a subjective and emotionally charged reaction to philosophic history and other Enlightenment modes of representing the past, thereby eliding a far more varied and complex set of Romantic historiographical agendas and representative practices based on newly expanded definitions of Romanticism and its periodicity.
Michael Bentley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199225996
- eISBN:
- 9780191863431
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199225996.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter studies British historical writing, tracing its transformations from the end of the war—when, arguably, much of the late nineteenth-century empiricist agenda was still intact, and ...
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This chapter studies British historical writing, tracing its transformations from the end of the war—when, arguably, much of the late nineteenth-century empiricist agenda was still intact, and political history continued to dominate—through signal events such as the founding of a new journal of radical historiography called Past and Present (1952), to the advent of neoconservatism in the 1980s, the puffing up and eventual bursting of the bubble of Franco-American-style quantification, and the advent of the cultural turn. Intertwined in the narratives of structural evolution, as well as generational narratives, one might see another in the growing presence of technology as a force impelling historical method and providing new ways of disseminating research. By 1995, many of Britain’s most successful historians defined themselves as ‘public intellectuals’ or tele-dons commanding a wide audience in ways that no one could have dreamed of in 1945.Less
This chapter studies British historical writing, tracing its transformations from the end of the war—when, arguably, much of the late nineteenth-century empiricist agenda was still intact, and political history continued to dominate—through signal events such as the founding of a new journal of radical historiography called Past and Present (1952), to the advent of neoconservatism in the 1980s, the puffing up and eventual bursting of the bubble of Franco-American-style quantification, and the advent of the cultural turn. Intertwined in the narratives of structural evolution, as well as generational narratives, one might see another in the growing presence of technology as a force impelling historical method and providing new ways of disseminating research. By 1995, many of Britain’s most successful historians defined themselves as ‘public intellectuals’ or tele-dons commanding a wide audience in ways that no one could have dreamed of in 1945.
Michael Bentley
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199533091
- eISBN:
- 9780191804359
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199533091.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter states that British historical writing has no shape, that there exists no pattern beyond the randomness of spontaneous authorship and occasional moments of involuntary intertextuality. A ...
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This chapter states that British historical writing has no shape, that there exists no pattern beyond the randomness of spontaneous authorship and occasional moments of involuntary intertextuality. A principal tool in approaching British historiography should be a rejection of the historiographical exercise as simply descriptive bibliography, a corresponding move in the direction of an explanatory account of when, how, and why images of the British past underwent transformation at the hands of its historians. This chapter also talks about the diverging pattern of expectation within British historiography in the 19th century which it states hangs on a contested understanding of what place history should play in framing its audiences' understanding of a nation and state.Less
This chapter states that British historical writing has no shape, that there exists no pattern beyond the randomness of spontaneous authorship and occasional moments of involuntary intertextuality. A principal tool in approaching British historiography should be a rejection of the historiographical exercise as simply descriptive bibliography, a corresponding move in the direction of an explanatory account of when, how, and why images of the British past underwent transformation at the hands of its historians. This chapter also talks about the diverging pattern of expectation within British historiography in the 19th century which it states hangs on a contested understanding of what place history should play in framing its audiences' understanding of a nation and state.
Daniel Woolf
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199219179
- eISBN:
- 9780191804267
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199219179.003.0024
- Subject:
- History, World Early Modern History
This chapter examines historical writing in Britain. It suggests three phases for the principal developments of the period from 1400 about 1740. The first phase, from 1400 to about 1550, is dominated ...
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This chapter examines historical writing in Britain. It suggests three phases for the principal developments of the period from 1400 about 1740. The first phase, from 1400 to about 1550, is dominated by dynastic and nationalist themes inherited from the royal/baronial and monarchical/papal struggles of the Later Middle Ages. A ‘Late Renaissance and Reformation’ phase, c.1540–1660, is governed by the religious tensions that climaxed in rebellion in both kingdoms. In the third phase, a ‘Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century’ phase, ending about 1740, historical writing adjusted itself to the permanent presence of ideological division; to the reality of a multi-denominational kingdom in England and of a Scotland increasingly dependent upon its wealthier southern neighbour; and to the tastes of a broader and more demanding readership.Less
This chapter examines historical writing in Britain. It suggests three phases for the principal developments of the period from 1400 about 1740. The first phase, from 1400 to about 1550, is dominated by dynastic and nationalist themes inherited from the royal/baronial and monarchical/papal struggles of the Later Middle Ages. A ‘Late Renaissance and Reformation’ phase, c.1540–1660, is governed by the religious tensions that climaxed in rebellion in both kingdoms. In the third phase, a ‘Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century’ phase, ending about 1740, historical writing adjusted itself to the permanent presence of ideological division; to the reality of a multi-denominational kingdom in England and of a Scotland increasingly dependent upon its wealthier southern neighbour; and to the tastes of a broader and more demanding readership.
Ralph Crane
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199609932
- eISBN:
- 9780191869761
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199609932.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, Prose (inc. letters, diaries)
This chapter explores the Anglo-Indian novel. The history of British writing on India stretches back almost as far as the Indo-British imperial encounter and includes travel writing, missionary ...
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This chapter explores the Anglo-Indian novel. The history of British writing on India stretches back almost as far as the Indo-British imperial encounter and includes travel writing, missionary letters, military memoirs, and scholarly accounts of Indian history and culture, all of which were published in great numbers in the eighteenth century. Literary texts followed, and included short prose narratives depicting Anglo-Indian life, missionary tales, descriptions of the landscape, and stories of native life. While all these forms were well received in their day, none was to prove as popular as the novel, which during the nineteenth century became the dominant form of Anglo-Indian literature. In the early nineteenth century, India was also used as an exotic setting for early fictions by a number of writers who would go on to rank amongst the best-known novelists of the Victorian period.Less
This chapter explores the Anglo-Indian novel. The history of British writing on India stretches back almost as far as the Indo-British imperial encounter and includes travel writing, missionary letters, military memoirs, and scholarly accounts of Indian history and culture, all of which were published in great numbers in the eighteenth century. Literary texts followed, and included short prose narratives depicting Anglo-Indian life, missionary tales, descriptions of the landscape, and stories of native life. While all these forms were well received in their day, none was to prove as popular as the novel, which during the nineteenth century became the dominant form of Anglo-Indian literature. In the early nineteenth century, India was also used as an exotic setting for early fictions by a number of writers who would go on to rank amongst the best-known novelists of the Victorian period.
Jahan Ramazani
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226703442
- eISBN:
- 9780226703374
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226703374.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
Poetry is often viewed as culturally homogeneous, “stubbornly national,” in T. S. Eliot's phrase, or “the most provincial of the arts,” according to W. H. Auden. But this book uncovers the ...
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Poetry is often viewed as culturally homogeneous, “stubbornly national,” in T. S. Eliot's phrase, or “the most provincial of the arts,” according to W. H. Auden. But this book uncovers the ocean-straddling energies of the poetic imagination—in modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; in post-World War II North America and the North Atlantic; and in ethnic American, postcolonial, and black British writing. Cross-cultural exchange and influence are, it argues, among the chief engines of poetic development in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Reexamining the work of a wide array of poets, from Eliot, Yeats, and Langston Hughes to Elizabeth Bishop, Lorna Goodison, and Agha Shahid Ali, the author reveals the many ways in which modern and contemporary poetry in English overflow national borders and exceed the scope of national literary paradigms. Through a variety of transnational templates—globalization, migration, travel, genre, influence, modernity, decolonization, and diaspora—he discovers poetic connection and dialogue across nations and even hemispheres. Wide-ranging in scope yet rigorously focused on particulars, the book demonstrates how poetic analysis can foster an aesthetically attuned transnational literary criticism that is at the same time alert to modernity's global condition.Less
Poetry is often viewed as culturally homogeneous, “stubbornly national,” in T. S. Eliot's phrase, or “the most provincial of the arts,” according to W. H. Auden. But this book uncovers the ocean-straddling energies of the poetic imagination—in modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; in post-World War II North America and the North Atlantic; and in ethnic American, postcolonial, and black British writing. Cross-cultural exchange and influence are, it argues, among the chief engines of poetic development in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Reexamining the work of a wide array of poets, from Eliot, Yeats, and Langston Hughes to Elizabeth Bishop, Lorna Goodison, and Agha Shahid Ali, the author reveals the many ways in which modern and contemporary poetry in English overflow national borders and exceed the scope of national literary paradigms. Through a variety of transnational templates—globalization, migration, travel, genre, influence, modernity, decolonization, and diaspora—he discovers poetic connection and dialogue across nations and even hemispheres. Wide-ranging in scope yet rigorously focused on particulars, the book demonstrates how poetic analysis can foster an aesthetically attuned transnational literary criticism that is at the same time alert to modernity's global condition.
