Modernism and the Post-Colonial: Literature and Empire 1885-1930

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Bloomsbury Academic, 2007 M08 9 - 162 pages

This book considers the shifts in aesthetic representation over the period 1885-1930 that coincide both with the rise of literary Modernism and imperialism's high point. If it is no coincidence that the rise of the novel accompanied the expansion of empire in the eighteenth-century, then the historical conditions of fiction as the empire waned are equally pertinent. Peter Childs argues that modernist literary writing should be read in terms of its response and relationship to events overseas and that it should be seen as moving towards an emergent post-colonialism instead of struggling with a residual colonial past. Beginning by offering an analysis of the generational and gender conflict that spans art and empire in the period, Childs moves on to examine modernism's expression of a crisis of belief in relation to subjectivity, space, and time. Finally, he investigates the war as a turning point in both colonial relations and aesthetic experimentation. Each of the core chapters focuses on one key writer and discuss a range of others, including: Conrad, Lawrence, Kipling, Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Conan Doyle and Haggard.

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Contents

Victorian and Modernist Adventurers
1
Sons and Daughters of the Late Colonialism
26
The Anxiety of Indian Encirclement
45
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Peter Childs is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research & Scholarship and Professor of Modern & Contemporary English Literature, Newman University, UK. He has published widely on twentieth and twenty-first century fiction.

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