ENGL8855 · English

British Literature and Postcolonial Theory

Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences

Fulfills the Theory requirement. Historians such as Bernard Cohn have taught us that analyses of British Literature and Culture will be incomplete if we do not assume England and its colonies as a single unit of analysis. However, the translation of this historical wisdom to literary analysis demands not only an understanding of colonial policy but also a re-invention of our reading practices. We shall review the premises of postcolonial studies and its various approaches to canonical British literature by asking how Britain and colonial activities from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries affected representations of the domestic space.