Alok Yadav | George Mason University (original) (raw)
Papers by Alok Yadav
The Modern Language Review, 1998
ELH, 1995
The various issues Sutherland raises here -- of popularity, meaning, reading, relevance, historic... more The various issues Sutherland raises here -- of popularity, meaning, reading, relevance, historicity, the instability or fragility of a texture of meanings -- constitute the terrain of my interest in Butler's Hudibras in this essay. Sutherland has characterized rather aptly the ...
Choice Reviews Online
... At George Mason, I owe most to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and Kristin Sam... more ... At George Mason, I owe most to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and Kristin Samuelian in sustaining this work and bringing it to completion, and wish to acknowledge also the University's support in time off from teaching through a Mathy Fellowship and ...
Before the Empire of English, 2004
Is it possible to approach the history of English literature without taking for granted its statu... more Is it possible to approach the history of English literature without taking for granted its status as a great tradition? What issues and dynamics would become evident if we recognized the claim to metropolitan cultural standing as an ambition on the part of English-language writers throughout the early modern period, rather than as an achieved fact? How would our perspective on eighteenth-century English-language literary culture change if we took seriously Shaftesbury’s contention that the “British Muses” were “yet in their mere Infant-State”?1 J. P Kenyon chastizes G. M. Trevelyan’s very popular English Social History (1942) for “its chauvinistic assumption that England had always been great,”?2 and a similar though even more deeply rooted assumption has formed the bedrock of most work on English literature: namely, the assumption that it has forrned a great tradition since the days of Shakespeare. But if we are interested in gaining a truly postimperial perspective on modern English-language literary culture, we will need to rethink this tendency to begin with the metropolitan status of English-language literary culture as a given, and will need to analyze instead the process through which this status was achieved.
Before the Empire of English, 2004
One of my main contentions in this book is that issues of cultural provinciality played a central... more One of my main contentions in this book is that issues of cultural provinciality played a central role in eighteenth-century British literary culture. Writers of the period understood that literature was not just a matter of artistic achievement but of cultural power. Individual achievements, in their view, took place within the space defined by the broader question of the standing of the cultural tradition of which they were a part—and cultural prestige, they knew, was in turn linked to the geopolitical power of the polity whose culture was in question. These connections have been brought under renewed scrutiny through the lense of postcolonial cultural criticism, but they involve an old recognition of the interplay of cultural and geopolitical power in the shaping of cultural status. What is harder for us to recognize is that across the Restoration and the eighteenth century, English-language writers saw themselves as in need of establishing the value of the cultural tradition in which they operated—certainly for the audience constituted by the wider world, but, consequently, to a certain extent for their own eyes as well.
Before the Empire of English, 2004
Before the Empire of English, 2004
In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon distinguishes between t... more In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon distinguishes between the structure of the Roman Empire—forming “one great nation, united by language, manners, and civil institutions”—and the structure of the modern “republic” of Europe, as he styles it, which emerged from the European Christendom of the Middle Ages.1 The strength of this modern European formation was based, in Gibbon’s view, not on unity and homogeneity of “language, manners, and … institutions,” but on national diversity and competition: he comments that, “On the revival of letters, … national emulation, a new religion, new languages, and a new world, called forth the genius of Europe” (1:84). Gibbon’s understanding of the modern European republic of states, and the republic of letters that forms its cultural double, is consonant with the views of other writers discussed in chapter 2. As we saw in that chapter, the notion of the republic of letters, as part of its transnational orientation, constantly calls attention to the diversity of multiple national literary traditions and to the related dynamic of “national emulation.” For Gibbon, “the genius of Europe” emerges out of the competition of nations, religions, languages; and, likewise, the eighteenth-century republic of letters gains its coherence not from a shared culture but from a dynamic of national competition.
Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 2010
The question I address is the following: what is our understanding of fictiveness or fictionality... more The question I address is the following: what is our understanding of fictiveness or fictionality and what consequences does it carry for our reading of novels especially in the practice of postcolonial or other varieties of political criticism? We are all familiar with the charge that ...
Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 2010
The question I address is the following: what is our understanding of fictiveness or fictionality... more The question I address is the following: what is our understanding of fictiveness or fictionality and what consequences does it carry for our reading of novels especially in the practice of postcolonial or other varieties of political criticism? We are all familiar with the charge that ...
... At George Mason, I owe most to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and Kristin Sam... more ... At George Mason, I owe most to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and Kristin Samuelian in sustaining this work and bringing it to completion, and wish to acknowledge also the University's support in time off from teaching through a Mathy Fellowship and ...
Cultural Critique, 1993
While nationalism has always constituted a crucial political dis-course in the countries of the T... more While nationalism has always constituted a crucial political dis-course in the countries of the Third World, it has recently been widely discussed in the West as well, in the daily newspapers, in weekly magazines like The New Yorker and The Nation, and in monthlies ...
Elh, 1995
The various issues Sutherland raises here -- of popularity, meaning, reading, relevance, historic... more The various issues Sutherland raises here -- of popularity, meaning, reading, relevance, historicity, the instability or fragility of a texture of meanings -- constitute the terrain of my interest in Butler's Hudibras in this essay. Sutherland has characterized rather aptly the ...
Literature Compass, 2004
Discusses two competing, ‘domestically’-oriented understandings of the dynamics of nationalism in... more Discusses two competing, ‘domestically’-oriented understandings of the dynamics of nationalism in the period 1660–1760 – the notion of an emergent, overarching and inclusive “British” identity and the notion of English “internal colonialism” in relation to the Celtic “peripheries”. The author argues, instead, for an approach that highlights England's own “provincial” standing in the wider European world of culture and the ambition to claim an “imperial” role as a way to erase this provinciality.
The Modern Language Review, 1998
ELH, 1995
The various issues Sutherland raises here -- of popularity, meaning, reading, relevance, historic... more The various issues Sutherland raises here -- of popularity, meaning, reading, relevance, historicity, the instability or fragility of a texture of meanings -- constitute the terrain of my interest in Butler's Hudibras in this essay. Sutherland has characterized rather aptly the ...
Choice Reviews Online
... At George Mason, I owe most to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and Kristin Sam... more ... At George Mason, I owe most to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and Kristin Samuelian in sustaining this work and bringing it to completion, and wish to acknowledge also the University's support in time off from teaching through a Mathy Fellowship and ...
Before the Empire of English, 2004
Is it possible to approach the history of English literature without taking for granted its statu... more Is it possible to approach the history of English literature without taking for granted its status as a great tradition? What issues and dynamics would become evident if we recognized the claim to metropolitan cultural standing as an ambition on the part of English-language writers throughout the early modern period, rather than as an achieved fact? How would our perspective on eighteenth-century English-language literary culture change if we took seriously Shaftesbury’s contention that the “British Muses” were “yet in their mere Infant-State”?1 J. P Kenyon chastizes G. M. Trevelyan’s very popular English Social History (1942) for “its chauvinistic assumption that England had always been great,”?2 and a similar though even more deeply rooted assumption has formed the bedrock of most work on English literature: namely, the assumption that it has forrned a great tradition since the days of Shakespeare. But if we are interested in gaining a truly postimperial perspective on modern English-language literary culture, we will need to rethink this tendency to begin with the metropolitan status of English-language literary culture as a given, and will need to analyze instead the process through which this status was achieved.
Before the Empire of English, 2004
One of my main contentions in this book is that issues of cultural provinciality played a central... more One of my main contentions in this book is that issues of cultural provinciality played a central role in eighteenth-century British literary culture. Writers of the period understood that literature was not just a matter of artistic achievement but of cultural power. Individual achievements, in their view, took place within the space defined by the broader question of the standing of the cultural tradition of which they were a part—and cultural prestige, they knew, was in turn linked to the geopolitical power of the polity whose culture was in question. These connections have been brought under renewed scrutiny through the lense of postcolonial cultural criticism, but they involve an old recognition of the interplay of cultural and geopolitical power in the shaping of cultural status. What is harder for us to recognize is that across the Restoration and the eighteenth century, English-language writers saw themselves as in need of establishing the value of the cultural tradition in which they operated—certainly for the audience constituted by the wider world, but, consequently, to a certain extent for their own eyes as well.
Before the Empire of English, 2004
Before the Empire of English, 2004
In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon distinguishes between t... more In The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon distinguishes between the structure of the Roman Empire—forming “one great nation, united by language, manners, and civil institutions”—and the structure of the modern “republic” of Europe, as he styles it, which emerged from the European Christendom of the Middle Ages.1 The strength of this modern European formation was based, in Gibbon’s view, not on unity and homogeneity of “language, manners, and … institutions,” but on national diversity and competition: he comments that, “On the revival of letters, … national emulation, a new religion, new languages, and a new world, called forth the genius of Europe” (1:84). Gibbon’s understanding of the modern European republic of states, and the republic of letters that forms its cultural double, is consonant with the views of other writers discussed in chapter 2. As we saw in that chapter, the notion of the republic of letters, as part of its transnational orientation, constantly calls attention to the diversity of multiple national literary traditions and to the related dynamic of “national emulation.” For Gibbon, “the genius of Europe” emerges out of the competition of nations, religions, languages; and, likewise, the eighteenth-century republic of letters gains its coherence not from a shared culture but from a dynamic of national competition.
Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 2010
The question I address is the following: what is our understanding of fictiveness or fictionality... more The question I address is the following: what is our understanding of fictiveness or fictionality and what consequences does it carry for our reading of novels especially in the practice of postcolonial or other varieties of political criticism? We are all familiar with the charge that ...
Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 2010
The question I address is the following: what is our understanding of fictiveness or fictionality... more The question I address is the following: what is our understanding of fictiveness or fictionality and what consequences does it carry for our reading of novels especially in the practice of postcolonial or other varieties of political criticism? We are all familiar with the charge that ...
... At George Mason, I owe most to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and Kristin Sam... more ... At George Mason, I owe most to Denise Albanese, Devon Hodges, Deborah Kaplan, and Kristin Samuelian in sustaining this work and bringing it to completion, and wish to acknowledge also the University's support in time off from teaching through a Mathy Fellowship and ...
Cultural Critique, 1993
While nationalism has always constituted a crucial political dis-course in the countries of the T... more While nationalism has always constituted a crucial political dis-course in the countries of the Third World, it has recently been widely discussed in the West as well, in the daily newspapers, in weekly magazines like The New Yorker and The Nation, and in monthlies ...
Elh, 1995
The various issues Sutherland raises here -- of popularity, meaning, reading, relevance, historic... more The various issues Sutherland raises here -- of popularity, meaning, reading, relevance, historicity, the instability or fragility of a texture of meanings -- constitute the terrain of my interest in Butler's Hudibras in this essay. Sutherland has characterized rather aptly the ...
Literature Compass, 2004
Discusses two competing, ‘domestically’-oriented understandings of the dynamics of nationalism in... more Discusses two competing, ‘domestically’-oriented understandings of the dynamics of nationalism in the period 1660–1760 – the notion of an emergent, overarching and inclusive “British” identity and the notion of English “internal colonialism” in relation to the Celtic “peripheries”. The author argues, instead, for an approach that highlights England's own “provincial” standing in the wider European world of culture and the ambition to claim an “imperial” role as a way to erase this provinciality.