Novel and Empire

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markman Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Sentimental Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Slave System ◽  
Creative Potential ◽  
Folk Beliefs ◽  
Oriental Tale ◽  
The Relationship

This essay examines novel’s relation with empire through the relationship between the form of the novel and the ideology of empire. It analyses the themes of colony and cross-cultural global encounters in popular prose subgenres of the eighteenth century, including the robinsonade, imitations of Crusoe’s island adventures, and the oriental tale, free imitations of the Islamic story collection. Although contemporary discourse on the British Empire argued that it was founded on ideas of liberty, commerce, and Christianity, the problem of slavery presented a powerful contradiction and growing controversy. Depictions of slavery in the sentimental novel advertised the asymmetrical violence endemic to the slave system, contributing to the emerging campaign for the abolition of the slave trade and, eventually, the emancipation of the slaves. Nonetheless, Gothic fictions found creative potential in the terrors of slavery and in folk beliefs derived from slave society, such as obeah and the zombie.

A Dark Inheritance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke N. Newman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Slave System ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
The Relationship

Focusing on Jamaica, Britain’s most valuable colony in the Americas by the mid-eighteenth century, A Dark Inheritance explores the relationship between racial classifications and the inherited rights and privileges associated with British subject status. Brooke Newman reveals the centrality of notions of blood and blood mixture to evolving racial definitions and sexual practices in colonial Jamaica and to legal and political debates over slavery and the rights of imperial subjects on both sides of the Atlantic. Weaving together a diverse range of sources, Newman shows how colonial racial ideologies rooted in fictions of blood ancestry at once justified permanent, hereditary slavery for Africans and barred members of certain marginalized groups from laying claim to British liberties on the basis of hereditary status. This groundbreaking study demonstrates that challenges to an Atlantic slave system underpinned by distinctions of blood had far-reaching consequences for British understandings of race, gender, and national belonging.

scholarly journals Interpretations of Emanuel Swedenborg’s image of the afterlife in the novel Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Mahlamäki ◽  
Tomas Mansikka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Postmodern Novel ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
The Relationship

This article discusses the relationship between Western esotericism and literature. As an example of a secular author who uses and benefits from esoteric texts, ideas and thoughts as resources in creating a literary artwork, the article analyses Laura Lindstedt’s novel Oneiron. A Fantasy About the Seconds After Death (2015). It contextualises the novel within the frames of Western esotericism and literature, focusing on Emanuel Swedenborg’s impact on discourses of the afterlife in literature. Laura Lindstedt’s postmodern novel indicates various ways that esoteric ideas, themes, and texts can work as resources for authors of fiction in twenty-first century Finland. Since the late eighteenth century Swedenborg’s influence has been evident in literature and among artists, especially in providing resources for other-worldly imagery. Oneiron proves that the ideas of Swedenborg are still part of the memory of Western culture and literature.

Varen'ka Dobroselova: An Experiment in the Desentimentalization of the Sentimental Heroine in Dostoevskii's Poor Folk

Slavic Review ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-533
Author(s):  
Gary Rosenshield
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Sentimental Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Epistolary Form ◽  
Comic Fiction

Ever since its publication the success of Fedor Dostoevskii's first novel Poor Folk has been ascribed primarily to the characterization of its “naturalistic” hero, Makar Devushkin, not to its sentimental heroine, Varen'ka Dobroselova. Although critics have continued to discover new merits in Poor Folk, in the end it is Devushkin who dominates the novel and on whom, in one way or another, most of its virtues depend. Not only is Devushkin the protagonist, he is also at the center of the novel's important innovations in style, theme, and characterization. Dostoevskii took the poor copying clerk, a type that for a decade had been used as a stock device—and most often the butt—of Russian comic fiction, and transformed him into the hero of a tragi-comic sentimental novel. This transformation was much abetted by Dostoevskii's use of the epistolary form— a form common to the sentimental novel of the eighteenth century, but long outdated in Russia by the 1840s—for it permitted the hero to tell his own story and, by so doing, to reveal the sensitive human being behind the comic mask.

scholarly journals ENTERTAINING THE EMPIRE: THEATRICAL TOURING COMPANIES AND AMATEUR DRAMATICS IN COLONIAL INDIA

2014 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOBIAS BECKER
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Community Theatre ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
Racial Hierarchies ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTThis article argues that theatre in colonial India – both in the form of touring companies and amateur dramatics – offered much more than mere entertainment: first, it was an important social space where the British diaspora constituted itself as a community. Secondly, it served as a lifeline to the home country. By watching theatrical performances either brought to them straight from London or which they performed themselves, colonial Britons felt in touch with their homeland. Finally, theatre not only allowed colonial audiences to participate in the metropolitan culture; it inadvertently helped to unify the British empire. Whether living in London, the provinces, or a colonial city, all British subjects consumed the same popular culture, forming in effect one big taste community. Theatre, therefore, lends itself to a discussion of central issues of imperial history, as, for example, the relationship between the metropolitan centre and the imperial periphery, the colonial public sphere, social and racial hierarchies, the perception of the ‘Other’, and processes of cross-cultural exchange and appropriation.

The Novel in the Era of Plessy

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-86
Author(s):  
Christine Holbo
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Realism ◽  
Sentimental Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Uncle Tom's Cabin ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
The Relationship

The transformation of literary realism in the late nineteenth century took place within the context of a categorical shift in American social epistemologies. The first chapter presents an interdisciplinary, generational portrait of this shift by examining a set of key texts from the years 1896–98 as summaries of the reconstruction of law, literature, and philosophy since the Civil War. Two important works by the James brothers, philosopher William James’s “The Sentiment of Rationality” and Henry James’s What Maisie Knew, demonstrate how the relationship between “sentiment” and “rationality” had been transformed. By attacking the nineteenth century’s trust in the emotions alongside its belief in a transcendent concept of reason, William and Henry James made a case for a new kind of moral imagination grounded in the uncertainty of the emotions and the unknowability of other selves. While the James brothers greeted the collapse of the sentimental paradigm as an emancipatory moment for individuals and for the novel itself, the lawyer and novelist Albion Tourgée saw it as imperiling the ability of Americans to speak, write, or think about freedom. Best known as Homer Plessy’s lawyer in Plessy v. Ferguson, Tourgée was also the most passionate defender of the emancipatory role of the sentimental novel. Exploring Tourgée’s opposition to pluralistic relativism in his brief on behalf of Homer Plessy and his literary analysis of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, this chapter explores the opposition between the Jameses’ celebratory vision of epistemological perspectivalism and Tourgée’s defense of sentimental reason.

Does Online Dating Promotion Vary Across Cultures? A Cross-cultural Analysis of Homepage Advertisements of Online Dating Services in 51 Countries

2021 ◽  
pp. 097325862110600
Author(s):  
Aditi Paul ◽  
Saifuddin Ahmed ◽  
Karolina Zaluski
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Online Dating ◽  
Uncertainty Avoidance ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Advertising Appeals ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

This study extends our understanding of the influence of culture on advertising within the novel context of online dating. People around the world have come to depend on online dating services (ODSs) to participate in the dating process. Since the norms and expectations of dating are influenced by a country’s cultural values, we expect ODSs to adapt their advertising messages to be congruent with these values. Using the Pollay–Hofstede framework, we examine the relationship between advertising appeals used by 1,003 ODSs from 51 countries and the cultural dimensions of these countries. Results showed that ODS advertisements appealed to people’s need for relationship, friendship, entertainment, sex, status, design and identity. The use of these appeals was congruent with only the individualism/collectivism and uncertainty avoidance cultural dimensions. Based on these results, we argue that ODS’s overwhelming use of culturally incongruent advertising messages can lead to a global transformation and homogenisation of the dating culture.

scholarly journals “The Darts to Wound With Endless Love!” on Hannah Cowley’s Response to Frances Burney’s Evelina

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-57
Author(s):  
Anna Paluchowska-Messing
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Hannah Cowley ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe paper traces the intertextual echoes of Frances Burney’s debut novel, Evelina, in The Belle’s Stratagem, a play by Burney’s contemporary Hannah Cowley. The latter was certainly an avid admirer of Burney. In one of her poems she pays tribute to the novelist and praises her ability to achieve uncommon subtlety in the depiction of characters in her writing: “What pen but Burney’s …/… draws from nature with a skill so true” (Escott 2012: 38). The paper, however, argues that the connection between the writers and their literary productions goes much further than the obeisance paid to Burney in Cowley’s admiring verses. The congruence between the plots of Evelina and The Belle’s Stratagem, and, in some instances, the very wording used in the two texts, poses immediate questions about its significance in Cowley’s popular play (which was first produced in 1780, two years after the publication of Burney’s debut). The conclusions suggest that Cowley deliberately drew Burney’s novel into a discussion on viable models of femininity and matrimony in contemporary society. But they also point to a wider phenomenon, namely, the extent to which the relationship between the eighteenth-century theatre and novel was reciprocal. While several recent studies discuss the influence of the theatre on the novel, little has been said on the importance of the novel for the development of the contemporary drama. This new reading of Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem as a response to Burney’s Evelina shows the immediacy with which a literary dialogue could be opened by authors and appreciated by audiences on the vibrant eighteenth-century cultural scene.

scholarly journals As conexões entre a literatura de cordel setecentista e a ascensão do romance em Portugal no século XIX

Navegações ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 172
Author(s):  
Moizeis Sobreira de Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
French Novel ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Literatura De Cordel

É muito habitual pensar o romance português, sobretudo o volume de produção do século XIX, como um fenômeno ligado à importação do modelo romancístico francoinglês. Essa abordagem ignora o impacto que a tradição romancística portuguesa setecentista, muito habitualmente considerada como inexistente, teve sobre o romance do século XIX, nomeadamente a sua contribuição como elemento formativo. Com base nisso, este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar, em linhas gerais, a presença de fontes setecentistas lusitanas no romance português oitocentista, destacando dentre essas fontes a literatura de cordel e possíveis pontos de contato estabelecidos entre ela e a obra de romancistas portugueses do século XIX como Camilo Castelo Branco e Alexandre Herculano.********************************************************************The relationship between cordel literature of eighteenth-century and the rise of the novel in Portugal in the nineteenth centuryAbstract: It is very common to think about Portuguese novel as a phenomenon connected with the English and French novel. This approach ignores that the eighteenth-century Portuguese novel tradition had an impact on the nineteenth-century novel as a formative element. Based on this finding, this article aims to discuss the presence of Lusitanian eighteenth-century sources in the Portuguese novel of the nineteenth-century, highlighting among these sources the cordel literature and possible points of contact established between her and the novels of Portuguese authors of the nineteenth century as Camilo Castelo Branco and Alexandre Herculano.Keywords: Novel; Cordel literature; Camilo Castelo Branco; Alexandre Herculano, António da Silva, o Mestre de Gramática

In Place/Out of Place

Matatu ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
WUMI RAJI
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Relationship

This essay focuses on the transformation of the experience of crossings and transnationalism in Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s In Dependence. Manyika’s novel is a story of crosscultural love. The two main characters, one male, black, and Nigerian; and the other female, white and British, first come across each other as students in Oxford. The relationship which consequently develops between them passes through phases of turbulence, spans a period of three decades and is acted out in three continents. In the end, the author’s point seems to be that humanities in general share dependent relationships with each other. Though of different racial origins, Manyika places her two major characters in the novel on equal pedestals. Both are of middle class backgrounds, excel in their studies, and later distinguish themselves in their chosen careers. My intention in this essay is to elaborate on the perspective of transnationalism and cross-cultural interconnectedness as articulated in the novel.

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