Spanning nearly two & a half centuries of English literature about India, Under Western Eyes traces the development of an imperial discourse that governed the English view of India well into the twentieth century. Narrating this history from its Reformation beginnings to its Victorian consolidation...

Spanning nearly two & a half centuries of English literature about India, Under Western Eyes traces the development of an imperial discourse that governed the English view of India well into the twentieth century. Narrating this history from its Reformation beginnings to its Victorian consolidation, Balachandra Rajan tracks this imperial presence through a wide range of literary & ideological sites. In so doing, he explores from a postcolonial vantage point collusions of gender, commerce, & empire-while revealing the tensions, self-deceptions, & conflicts at work within the English imperial design. Rajan begins with the Portuguese poet Camoes, whose poem celebrating Vasco da Gama's passage to India becomes, according to its eighteenth-century English translator, the epic of those who would possess India. He closely examines Milton's treatment of the Orient & Dryden's Aureng-Zebe, the first English literary work on an Indian subject. Texts by Shelley, Southey, Mill, & Macaulay, among others, come under careful scrutiny, as does Hegel's significant impact on English imperial discourse. Comparing the initial English representation of its actions in India (as a matter of commerce, not conquest) & its contemporaneous treatment of Ireland, Rajan exposes contradictions that shed new light on the English construction of a subaltern India. Giving postcolonial thought a historical dimension, Under Western Eyes also places literary history in new perspective through postcolonial readings. It will interest scholars of cultural history, particularly British imperial history, & those engaged with postcolonial, literary, subaltern, South Asian, & cultural studies.

Medievalism - the whole spectrum of post-medieval response to the middle ages -is now accepted as a vital key to the understanding of Western culture and society from 1500 to the present, pervading every aspect of our time, from the popularto the scholarly and artistic. Studies in Medievalism, now...

Medievalism - the whole spectrum of post-medieval response to the middle ages -is now accepted as a vital key to the understanding of Western culture and society from 1500 to the present, pervading every aspect of our time, from the popularto the scholarly and artistic. Studies in Medievalism, now published annually, is the one series to provide a regular forum for discussion of issues related to medievalism. This volume is devoted to medievalism in England, appropriately, since England has always played a central part in the development of medievalism. Contributors from England, Germany, Japan, Canada and the United States deal with topics ranging from 16th-century antiquarianism to 20th-century detective fiction.Contributors: D.R. WOOLF, DENNIS O'BRIEN, PETER HADORN, A. CAMERON AIRHEART, MARTIN WALSH, R.J.SMITH, ROGER SIMPSON, RAYMOND CHAPMAN, CLARE SIMMONS, THOMAS COOKSEY, RENATE HAAS, YURI FUWA, ANTHONY HARRISON, ROBERT BURTON, EDWIN CHRISTIAN, BLAKE LINDSY, MARC BAER.