Debbie Sasser

12-11-09

Essay 1

My Literary Epiphany: Historicism and the Novel

Studying literature within a colonial and post-colonial context was never part of my education until this semester in Dr. White's Multicultural Literature class. At first I was not comprehending the colonial and post-colonial ideas, themes, and objectives during our class discussions. Like 2008 student Matt Richards reported in his essay, Moving Away from Bias and Towards Understanding, I had found it challenging to look at a novel as an educational tool, because I am usually captured by the story with its reader-friendly characters, colorful descriptions, exciting plots, and overall appeal to the imagination. Richards says, "I used to read novels and focus on what the story was about without looking into the issues that were being addressed." Likewise, I have not always been able to perceive the deeper issues that were illustrating colonial and post-colonial ideas this semester. However, I experienced a literary epiphany when I researched the historical background of the literature and films we studied. Historicism resonates with me as it provides a solid framework I can build my perceptions of the novels on.

As I did research on the 1800–1900s history of  Pakistan and India for my web presentation about Train to Pakistan, I suddenly gained a highly more informed perspective on what was going on in the novel—an illustration of historicism. I found out what was causing the civil unrest and revolts among the Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. Visual evidence of the historical settings in India and Africa during the time of Train to Pakistan and Heart of Darkness were effectively revealed by the student presentations that Charles Colson and Aaron Schneider made on Simba and The Man Who Would Be King. I was really fascinated by these two cinematic portrayals of colonialism and the student presentations made an effective impact on my outlook of the reality of what colonialism looked like in India and Africa.

When I was scheduled to discuss Heart of Darkness, which I considered a difficult book to understand, I did some research on the historical time period when the book was written, and also found that seeing how the book and history correlate made the experience of reading the novel much easier and my understanding was magnified greatly. I still struggled to understand many of the terms and descriptions, but my overall outlook was enhanced again by the framework of the novel as historicism. Presenting historical overviews in conjunction with the study of colonial and post-colonial  novels could be an effective way to help Americans accept and gain new perspective on alternative worldviews. History is such a broad field that it is easy to leave out parts, especially the part that might not be pleasant or praise-worthy. However, in education it is important to have an unbiased curriculum that includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. My use of the study of history to better understand the novels we read this semester, made the subjects much easier to understand, and also helped me realize that although I was reading fiction, it was somewhat based on historical context. As my epiphany regarding colonialism and post-colonialism was strongly affected by the use of historical background to enhance and solidify the context of the novels we read, likewise using history could help lessen America's resistance to post-colonial criticism.  

During the first half of the semester, we read criticism, which might make some British peopled uncomfortable, from Jamaica Kincaid in her piece A Small Place. She says, "You loved knowledge, and where ever you went you made sure to build a school, a library (yes, and in both of these places you distorted or erased my history and glorified your own)" (Kinkaid, 94). However, even though this quotation suggests wrong-doing on the part of the British colonizers, it is still part of history and should be discussed openly and without resistance. The sentiments revealed in this piece by Kincaid, give the reader the realization that colonization reaches deeply into people's lives in many different countries around the world—affecting their culture and lives, and can even affect their prospects for the future.

While researching for my research posts, I was especially fascinated by an interview conducted by Kati Stammwitz with Pico Iyer, which included interesting colonial and post-colonial references and points. Iyer is a post-colonial travel writer who has a culturally diverse background as an English born, Indian who grew up in California and currently lives in Japan. Iyer says, "The English, for example, have traditionally trained sardonic and skeptical eyes on all the other cultures of the world; now their former possessions are doing the same on the English" (Stammwitz). He is referring to travel writers who have written classic travel books on England, turning eyes just as unillusioned and scathing on England as England has traditionally turned on the world. Iyer continues, "In that sense, they are using the great imperial genre of travel writing against the traditional forces of Empire, turning the telescope in the other direction." Iyer brings out interesting points about the perspective shift between self and other in this context.

Iyer continues to reveal his outlook on the colonizer by saying, "The difference, perhaps, is that, in the old days, a travel writer from England, say, would survey India with a very firm sense of who he was and how far he'd come: he was a European inspecting a strange foreign culture" (Stammwitz). His ideas are an illustration of what the missionaries were doing in Things Fall Apart—coming to save the barbarians from their evil ways and convert them to Christianity. Iyer finds his that through the years his outlook has been transformed, because now he aims to visit Britain, America or India without preconceived ideas or assumptions. Iyer's new outlook is like my own experience. I choose to look at people from a foreign culture and see them as different but not automatically barbaric or in some way inferior to me and my culture. Studying colonial and post-colonial literature helps the reader build a new set of lenses with which to see the world. Historical outlooks was the predominant source of enlightenment for my learning experience with colonial and post-colonial literature this semester, and historicism has advanced my ability to understand educationally relevant meaning in novels.

Works Cited

Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. London: Virago, 1988.

Stammwitz, Kati. "Turning the Telescope in the Other Direction': Four Interviews with Post-        Colonial Travel Writers. Pico Iyer, Frank Delaney, Dan Jacobson, and Dervla Murphy."