Professor
Priya Joshi
Spring 1998, Wednesdays, 3-6 pm, Room 221 Wheeler
English 203, "The Empire's New Clothes: The Novel in India"
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 10-11:30 in Room 451 Wheeler
Phone: 510-642-2377;
Email: pjoshi@socrates.berkeley.edu
The Course
The novel was introduced as a genre in India in the nineteenth century as part of a colonial strategy best articulated by Thomas Macaulay thus: "to create a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect." Keeping the mandates of this history in the background, this course will study the rise of the new genre in India. Focusing on the Indian novel in English, we will try to understand how colonial history, nationalist movements, and an encroaching modernity impossible to abstract from empire played a role in the morphology of the Indian novel. We will address questions such as: why the Indian novel emerged almost a century after the genre was introduced in India in the 1830s; how we might understand the relationship of the novel as a narrative form to Indian nationalism; how the Indian novel addresses the cultural and intellectual geography of an emerging post-colonial situation; and what was the role of prose fiction in addressing the "woman's question." Particular attention will be given in seminar discussions to issues of cultural transmission, literary influence, and form. If there is interest, some attention will be given to contemporary debates on post-colonial literature and theory.
The Texts
Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee, Anandamath
Mirza Mohammad Hadi Ruswa, Umraon Jan Ada
Rabindranath Tagore, Home & the World and Gora
Mulk Raj Anand, Untouchable
Ahmed Ali, Twilight in Delhi
G.V. Desani, All about H. Hatterr (if available)
Anita Desai, Baumgartner's Bombay
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
Amitav Ghosh, The Shadow Lines
Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy
A reader with supplementary articles is available from Krishna Copy
on University at Shattuck (540-5959).
Course Requirements
Attendance and vigorous participation in all discussions; one or two oral presentations; a 12-15 page paper due on May 6th.
Schedule of Readings (due by the date indicated)
1/21: Welcome & Introduction
1/28: Clark, "Introduction: The Novel in India"; Mukherjee, Realism & Reality sel.;
Anandamath
2/4: Umraon Jan Ada;
Oldenburg, "The Courtesans of Lucknow"
2/11: The Home and the World;
Mitra, "Gender & Nationalism in Tagore's Home & the World"
2/18: Gora; Nair, "Postcoloniality and Literary History" OR
All About H. Hatterr; Narasimhan, "The Strangeness of G.V. Desani"
2/25: Untouchable;
Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, essay 1
3/4: Twilight in Delhi;
Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, essay 2
3/11: Partition Accounts: Manto, Premchand, Das, Tharu
3/18: Chugtai and Iyengar stories
3/23-3/27: Spring Break; NO CLASS
4/1: Baumgartner's Bombay;
Desai, "Indian Fiction Today"
4/8: Midnight's Children
4/15: Midnight's Children;
"Imaginary Homelands"; Lipscomb, "Contesting History in Midnight's Children"
4/22: The Shadow Lines;
Ghosh, "The Ghosts of Mrs. Gandhi"
4/29: Mukherjee, "Notes on Framing a Course";
Rushdie in The New Yorker;
Concluding Remarks
5/6: 12-15 page essay due