"Writing Empire": South Africa and the colonial fiction of Anthony Trollope
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Authors
Norton-Amor, Elizabeth Anne
Issue Date
2009-08-25T10:51:02Z
Type
Thesis
Language
en
Keywords
Anthony Trollope , Victorian Literature , Postcolonial Theory , 'Writing Empire' , Colonial Travel Narrative , Colonial Novel , Englishness
Alternative Title
Abstract
Postcolonial theory teaches us that the Empire was as much a textual as a physical undertaking: the Empire was (and is) experienced through its texts. Anthony Trollope was an enthusiastic traveller and helped to "write the Empire" in both his travel narratives and in his novels. This study examines his travel narrative South Africa, and explores how the colony is depicted in this work and in Trollope's "colonial" novels: Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, John Caldigate, An Old Man's Love and The Fixed Period. Trollope's colonies are places of moral danger where the value systems instilled by English society provide the only means for overcoming the corrupting influences of the colonial space. He writes the colonies as images of Britain, but these images are never true reflections of the homeland: there is always an element of distortion present, which serves to subvert the "Englishness" of his colonial landscapes.
Description
Citation
Norton-Amor, Elizabeth Anne (2009) "Writing Empire": South Africa and the colonial fiction of Anthony Trollope, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/1254>