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NARRATIVES OF EMPIRE: Masked Fictions
- Author(s):
- Tom Durwood (see profile) , Nalini Iyer
- Date:
- 2011
- Subject(s):
- British territories and possessions, Women
- Item Type:
- Online publication
- Tag(s):
- empire, British empire
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/at9k-bb83
- Abstract:
- Smart people like Edward Said, Harold Bloom and, here, Nalini Iyer, see elements of imperial narratives in novels like Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies. The same elements can be identified in contemporary stories movies like Avatar. As empires change, so do the stories we tell to make sense of the machineries and processes that support them. What is an “imperial narrative”? Who cares? While her concern in this dissertation is women and their masked or coded narratives, Prof. Iyer gives us some clear answers to these basic questions in her interview and in the excerpt here. If you read her entire dissertation, you will see the in-depth scholarship which supports her arguments with specific and detailed examples of masked literature. When she discusses historiography in the second paragraph of the excerpt, she means the process of writing history. My students always enjoy writing like this. It seems at first to be hopelessly obscure – but we quickly see that their favorite books, movies and television shows carry many of these same elements (particularly encounters with the Other, whether ET: The Extraterrestrial or Harry Potter, a vampire in Twilight or a warrior in Last of the Mohicans). A topic like this one can propel a study unit on the Other that lasts for weeks, and one that dovetails as easily with sociology as it does with literature.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Online publication Show details
- Pub. URL:
- http://empirestudies.com/2011/08/29/masked-fictions/
- Publisher:
- Empire Studies Magazine
- Pub. Date:
- August 29, 2011
- Website:
- empirestudies.com
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
- Share this:
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