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Spanning nearly two and 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 and ideological sites. In so doing, he explores from a postcolonial vantage point collusions of gender, commerce, and empire—while revealing the tensions, self-deceptions, and conflicts at work within the English imperial design.
Rajan begins with the Portuguese poet Camões, 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 and Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe, the first English literary work on an Indian subject. Texts by Shelley, Southey, Mill, and 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) and 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, and those engaged with postcolonial, literary, subaltern, South Asian, and cultural studies.
Rajan begins with the Portuguese poet Camões, 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 and Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe, the first English literary work on an Indian subject. Texts by Shelley, Southey, Mill, and 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) and 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, and those engaged with postcolonial, literary, subaltern, South Asian, and cultural studies.
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From the Back Cover:
""Under Western Eyes" is a learned, sophisticated, often brilliant analysis of the consolidation of English imperialist discourse about India from the earliest stages of the East India Company through the 1830s."--Patrick Brantlinger, Indiana University
About the Author:
Balachandra Rajan is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Western Ontario. He has written numerous scholarly books, including The Form of the Unfinished: English Poetics from Spenser to Pound and two novels.
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- PublisherDuke University Press Books
- Publication date1999
- ISBN 10 082232279X
- ISBN 13 9780822322795
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages280
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Under Western Eyes: India from Milton to Macaulay (Post-Contemporary Interventions)
Published by
Duke University Press Books
(1999)
ISBN 10: 082232279X
ISBN 13: 9780822322795
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Good. HARDCOVER Good - Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name - GOOD Standard-sized. Seller Inventory # M082232279XZ3
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