Book-History Approaches to India: Representations of the Subcontinent in the Novel and Verse, 1780–1823

Abstract

Literary representations of India in verse and novels written by British authors during the period 1780–1823 have been approached by contemporary scholars either from the postcolonial perspective of relating the fiction to the shifting relationship between colonizer or colonized, or to correlating portrayals to elitist political debates taking place within the metropole. The argument proposes that forthcoming scholarship should adopt a book-history approach to the topic which would add an important contextual dimension to the readings of fictional texts and understanding of a whole set of British cultural attitudes towards Indians. To this end, it proposes that further critical analysis of British India fictions could situate recurring tropes about India in relation to the demands and prevailing fashions of the literary marketplace, and determine how the varying perceived cultural status and the internal development of the two literary modes affect portrayals of the subcontinent.