3.0

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A haloed claim about the realist novel is that it tells us stories that help make sense of the world— but is it possible to represent the complexity of social life under global capitalism? How do novels engage with the problem of knowledge posed by empire and colonization? We will look at writers from within the imperial metropolis as they struggle to imagine the totality of the geopolitical world, and also at writers from formerly colonized regions who “write back” to the imperial center, bending novelistic conventions along the way. The course starts by asking how new conventions and quirky techniques of novel-writing emerge when novelists try leaving the certainty of their national and regional boundaries to enter the confusion of uncharted territories. It then turns to postcolonial novels, to consider how these write against, or claim power through, the notion that their regions are chaotic and undecipherable. Primary texts: Moby Dick, Lord Jim, A Passage to India, Sea of Poppies, The White Tiger.