February
1, 2002
The
Empire Writes Back: Literary Critic to Speak at MHC February 4
about Indian Writers and the British Empire
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MHC
Professor of Asian studies Indira Peterson (left) visits
with Meenakshi Mukherjee at Hyderabad University, where
Peterson was a visiting lecturer two years ago.
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Book lovers paying
attention to the literary scene in the last decade have witnessed
the recent explosion and popularity of South Asian authors writing
in English—Arundhati Roy, whose The God of Small Things
earned her the prestigious Booker Prize in 1997; Jhumpa Lahiri,
whose The Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize
in 2000; Rohinton Mistry, whose A Fine Balance recently
became an Oprah Book Club choice. Meenakshi Mukherjee, professor
at Hyderabad University and one of India's most significant literary
critics, will put these current authors into their historical
and cultural contexts in "Nation, Novel, and Empire: Britain
and India in the Nineteenth Century," a lecture scheduled
for February 4, at 4:30 pm in the New York Room, Mary Woolley
Hall. Sponsored by the Asian Studies Program and the English department,
the lecture is free and open to the public.
Mukherjee, an expert
on nineteenth-century British novelists and both early and postcolonial
Indian novelists in English, will address the effect of the British
Empire on the British novel, especially in the nineteenth century.
She will also address what she calls "the opposite process,"
the effect of the British Empire on the novel in India.
According to MHC Professor
Indira Peterson, chair of Asian studies and a specialist in Indian
literature, Mukherjee wants to challenge the simple equation between
the use of the English language and submission to the British
Empire, a school of thought that suggests that early Indian novelists
wrote Victorian novels in English as a result of the total "colonization"
of their minds by their English education, only later adapting
the genre to their literary traditions and languages as a form
of early decolonization. Mukherjee argues that nineteenth-century
Indian writers in English did not simply assimilate or imitate
European ideas and colonial ideals, says Peterson; rather, they
subverted and resisted colonization, declaring the independence
of both the novel and the English language from their colonialist
associations. "As one writer on postcolonial writing puts
it," said Peterson, "Mukherjee argues for a case of
'The empire writes back.'"
Mukherjee has won
great acclaim for her contributions to genre and postcolonial
(post-1947) studies in the context of modern Indian literature.
She has translated into English such major Bengali writers as
Nobel Prize–winning writer Rabindranath Tagore, and has written
extensively; her books include The Twice-Born Fiction: Themes
and Techniques of the Indian Novel in English (Heinemann,
1971); Considerations: Twelve Studies of Indo-Anglian Writing
(Delhi, 1977); Realism and Reality: The Novel and Society in
India (Delhi: Oxford, 1985); Interrogating Postcolonialism:
Theory, Text, and Context (edited with Harish Trivedi, Shimla,
1996); Jane Austen (Saint Martin's, 1991); and The Perishable
Empire (2000). Mukherjee is a member of the Advisory Council
of the Indian Academy of Letters and founder-editor of Vagartha,
a quarterly journal in English devoted to modern Indian literature.
She has lectured and taught in major universities worldwide.
"The lecture
will be relevant to anyone interested in Asian studies; history
and politics, especially colonialism and nationalism; or English
literature, especially the ways that literary genres relate to
the historical context out of which they emerge," says Amy
Martin, MHC assistant professor of English. "There is often
a focus on the ways that writers simply 'occupy' the genres set
forth by British writers," said Martin, "but I think
there is a much more complex relationship there, and Mukherjee
will help us understand it." A scholar of nineteenth-century
literature, Martin has focused on the nation-building identity
evident in the works of Irish writers, another case of "empire
writes back."
For more information,
contact Indira Peterson at x2376 or
ipeterso@mtholyoke.edu or
Amy Martin at x2644 or amartin@mtholyoke.edu.
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