Subject: response to Gill Gane
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 11:35:08 -0500 (CDT)


Gill:
As to 2: An Indian writer of the 40s, G. V. Desani, wrote a book called 
_All about H. Hatterr_. It is a witty and funny satire of the British 
"gentleman" tradition w/ deliberate use of broken English, eccentric 
sentence structure and syntax, bizarre idiom, etc. Some readers think 
of it as a good example of (Bhabha's concepts of) mimicry & hybridity.
No one I know has compared Desani's comic vision to Dickens's so that 
may be an interesting thing to think abt.

One thing you may want to keep in mind is the tenuous, invented, 
ad-hoc, and quite painful way in which writers from the colonies went 
about imitating British writers. This is a very complicated idea, I 
think.

As to 1: As I recall, there are numerous instances in Dickens's novels 
where allusion is made to empire and its accouterments. Even when 
these allusions are marginal, they serve to provide a backdrop to the 
self-representation of the British characters. In _Great Expectations_, 
e.g., imperialism functions as way to hold out Orientalized and exotic 
promises to Pip, even as his real fortune is coming to him from a 
seedy and sordid source in Australia (if I remember the novel right).

Have you looked at Sara Suleri's _The Rhetoric of English India_? It 
may prove useful for 1.

Good luck. Sounds like a great project.

Alpana Knippling
U. of Nebraska-Lincoln
ask-AT-unlinfo.unl.edu



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