British Imperial Literature, 1870-1940
Subtitle
Writing and the Administration of Empire
This book is a sweeping study of the way British writers used imperial service as a stage for dramatizing new modes of social order and self-consciousness. An expanding administrative machine, Bivona argues, naturalized and domesticated bureaucratic forms of social control, inscribing the ideals of service, submission, discipline, and renunciation in the hearts and minds of the young men employed in administrating the empire. Bivona examines how this governing ideology is treated in Kipling, Conrad, T. E. Lawrence, Forster, Cary and Orwell.
Bio
Dan Bivona is an associate professor in the Department of English at Arizona State University.
Praise for this book
'British Imperial Literature 1870-1940' creates a new context in which to study these important writers whose ideas still trouble us. Few books achieve so much. In doing so, it reminds us of the use of historical readings that are not overwhelmed by ideology.
Anne E. Fernald Modern Fiction Studies
