Comparative Literature

AY2016/2017 Semester 2

This module introduces students to: 1 The idea of colonial-era modernity and its impact on either side of the colonising divide 2 The idea that the idea of `modern life' had an impact within the culture of the major colonial power, Great Britain, and not just on the `inferior', non-Western cultures 3 Key texts in Chinese and Japanese literature that were themselves new forms of writing - `novels' - that came about with the impact of Western colonial culture in East Asia The module will examine two related binary categories, the `modern'/`traditional', and the `modern'/'primitive', as they appear in modernising societies. We begin with representative cultural texts from Great Britain, and its related empire. Why did the homeland of the Industrial Revolution have a fascination with adventure and more primitive lands? We look at the short stories of Rudyard Kipling (the `Bard' of Empire, and an enormously popular in his time) and director David Lean's multiple Oscar-winning film Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and examine the lure of the primitive and the cultural `other', and the importance of masculinity even as British modernity is taken for granted. Second, the module will proceed to examine a few major Chinese and Japanese cultural texts (including one film), writers and intellectuals, and see how East Asian culture was affected by their sense of Western modern superiority in technology, political organisation and culture. Both China and Japan, the major countries in East Asia, were never colonised, but they were intimidated by the presence of the Great Western Powers and their colonies in the region (mainly in Southeast Asia). Japan after the Meiji Restoration (1868) became the first modern Asian nation-state, and their attempts at intensive (and disruptive) modernising of their culture had a profound impact on the whole region - and this desire to be modern also meant that Japan itself became a colonising state, following the British, French and German nation-state models. This module attempts, therefore, a comparative examination of the ambiguities and contradictions in the process of becoming modern both in the colonial centre (Great Britain) and in northeast Asia, and an understanding of the new forms of literary culture that resulted in that latter region.