Colonial Odysseys - Empire and Epic in the Modernist Novel (Hardcover, illustrated edition)

Works such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out, E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust explore the relationship between Britain and its colonies when the British Empire was at its height. David Adams observes that, because of their structure and specific literary allusions, they also demand to be read in relation to the epic tradition. Colonial Odysseys focuses on narratives published in English between 1890 and 1940 in which protagonists journey from the familiar world of Europe to alien colonial worlds. political or literary than metaphysical: in each of these fictions a major character dies as a result of the journey, inviting reflection on the negation of existence. Repeatedly, imaginative encounters with distant, uncanny colonies produce familiar, insular presentations of life as an odyssey, with death as the home port. Expanding postcolonial and Marxist theories by drawing on the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg, Adams finds in this preoccupation with mortality a symptom of the failure of secular culture to give meaning to death. This concern, in his view, shapes the ways modernist narratives reinforce or critique imperial culture - the authors project onto British imperial experience their anxieties about the individual's relation to the absolute.

General

Imprint:	Cornell University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	November 2003
Authors:	David Adams
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 23mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	288
Edition:	illustrated edition
ISBN-13:	978-0-8014-4161-5
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > 19th century Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > From 1900 Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Novels, other prose & writers > General Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Imperialism Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political structure & processes > Colonization & independence Promotions
LSN:	0-8014-4161-7
Barcode:	9780801441615

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