123042 PS Proseminar Literature (2012S)

By the end of the 19th century, the British Empire had developed into what the historian Lawrence James aptly describes as a "colossus astride the world," which captured the public imagination and carried enormous ideological significance as a source of national self-aggrandisement and a vital missionary force in 'lighting the torch' of Western civilisation. The highly ambivalent experience of British imperial rule and its political, linguistic, and cultural legacy features as a pervasive theme in colonial and postcolonial literary (self-)representations, reflecting a wide range of responses from militant jingoism and heroic idealisation to subversive irony and fierce criticism.

In this class we will explore images of British colonial involvement and its far-reaching consequences by discussing some of the classic texts of 'Empire writing', such as the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, the Nobel Prize-winning 'bard of the British Empire', and E.M. Forster's modernist novel A Passage to India (1924). In addition, we will take a look at some outstanding examples of late-twentieth-century Black British literature, notably the highly successful comedy East is East (1997) by the British Pakistani playwright Ayub Khan-Din, which highlights questions of cultural identity in multicultural Britain. These texts will be analysed from the critical perspective of postcolonial theory, examining the 'rhetoric of Empire' and questioning the construction of cultural self-representations.

Please note: Students are expected to present 15-minute papers at a 'mini-conference' scheduled for Saturday, 16 June (9am-4pm); this means that there will be no classes on 21 March, 6 June, and 26 June. Attendance of the mini-conference is compulsory!