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The Colonial Novel and British India

Key information

  • Module code:

    5AAEB051

  • Level:

    5

  • Semester:

      Spring

  • Credit value:

    15

Module description

The module aims to equip students with the critical tools required to analyse the variety of British colonial representations of India in the 19th and 20th centuries. They will gain the necessary historical knowledge that will enable them to contextualise a range of novels and shorter fiction, as well as key historical documents and works of historiography.

Students will have developed the knowledge and critical skills to interpret the ways in which colonial texts mediated and articulated their historical and political backgrounds in India.  They will have reflected upon the hybrid constitution of these texts and their complex relationships to realism.  They will also have explored strategies of narration in colonial texts in terms of anxieties about the nature of different types of authority at home and in the empire.  Finally, at the end of the course they will have an understanding of the processes of identity formation and the complexities of colonial representations of India.

 

Assessment details

3,000 word essay (100%)

Educational aims & objectives

The module aims to equip students with the critical tools required to analyse the variety of British colonial representations of India in the 19th and 20th centuries. They will gain the necessary historical knowledge that will enable them to contextualise a range of novels and shorter fiction, as well as key historical documents and works of historiography. Students will have developed the knowledge and critical skills to interpret the ways in which colonial texts mediated and articulated their historical and political backgrounds in India. They will have reflected upon the hybrid constitution of these texts and their complex relationships to realism. They will also have explored strategies of narration in colonial texts in terms of anxieties about the nature of different types of authority at home and in the empire. Finally, at the end of the course they will have an understanding of the processes of identity formation and the complexities of colonial representations of India.

Teaching pattern

One lecture and seminar weekly

Suggested reading list

Background Reading

  • C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914. Global connections and comparisons(2004).
  • Elleke Boehmer, Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995).
  • Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness. British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 (1988).
  • Barbara Bush, Imperialism and Postcolonialism (2006).
  • Robert Fraser, Victorian Quest Romance. Stevenson, Haggard, Kipling, and Conan Doyle(1998).
  • Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire (1980).
  • Eric Hobsbawn, The Age of Empire 1875-1914 (1987).
  • Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality. The British Experience (1990).
  • Gail Ching-Liang Low, White skins/black masks: representation and colonialism (1995).
  • Ann McClintock, Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the colonial context(1995).
  • Thomas Metcalfe, Ideologies of the Raj (1995).
  • Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel writing and transculturation (1992).
  • Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s culture. Anthropology, Travel and Government (1994).

Core Texts

  • Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ (1888).
  • Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1822).
  • T.B. Macaulay’s ‘Minute of 2nd February 1835’
  • H.H. Wilson’s ‘Education of the Natives of India’ (1835)
  • Meadows Taylor, Confessions of a Thug (1839) – Only the Rupa edition or the Oxford World Classics edition.
  • Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868).
  • J.R. Seeley, The Expansion of England (1883).
  • Rudyard Kipling, Kim (1901)
  • E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)
  • Paul Scott, Staying On (1977)

Department

Module description disclaimer

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Please note that modules with a practical component will be capped due to educational requirements, which may mean that we cannot guarantee a place to all students who elect to study this module.

Please note that the module descriptions above are related to the current academic year and are subject to change.