Alexander Bubb | Roehampton University (original) (raw)

Papers by Alexander Bubb

Oxford University Press eBooks, Apr 13, 2023

This chapter explains why nineteenth-century readers with no specialist or professional commitmen... more This chapter explains why nineteenth-century readers with no specialist or professional commitment to Asian languages and literatures began to take an interest in oriental translations, an interest that can be observed to grow steadily over the course of the century. It proposes four main ‘growth factors’: a climate of religious tolerance and ecumenism, increased opportunities for travel to Asia, imperial consciousness, and concerns surrounding decadence and the perceived cultural decline of the West. It is then shown how each of these factors contributes to the phenomenal popularity of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, in a variety of translations between 1880 and 1920. Finally, the chapter defines some of the limits of Victorian cosmopolitanism, beyond which readerly curiosity or sympathy did not readily extend.

My thesis examines Kipling and Yeats within the structure of a ‘comparative biography’. My premis... more My thesis examines Kipling and Yeats within the structure of a ‘comparative biography’. My premise is that reading these two near-exact contemporaries alongside one another yields remarkable discursive echoes. My method consists in identifying these mutual echoes in their poetry and political rhetoric, and charting them against synchronicities in their lives. By reading one author against another in a fashion that might be considered canonically incongruous, I seek to throw light on unacknowledged links running across the cultural nexus of the period. I find these echoes particularly intriguing since Kipling and Yeats were for most of their careers irreconcilable political enemies. Yeats in his political ascendance frequently played to the gallery by denouncing Kipling, while the latter hardly varnished his opinion of Irish poetry and Irish nationalism. However, a cross-reading of the two poets’ bardic ambitions, heroic tropes and interpretations of history reveals that they frequently partake of a common discourse to achieve their opposed political ends. After supplementing this analysis with a biographical perspective, we can perceive that these discourses originate in their late 19th century artistic upbringing, and in the closely linked social circles which they inhabited in fin-de-siècle London. It is their very mutuality during the 1890s which imparts rancour to their twentieth-century attitudes, after the Boer War had ideologically sundered them. Throughout, the thesis conceives them as figures transiting through both space and period. They had to reject but also adapt their Victorian inheritance in order to carry forward the Romantic poetic. Simultaneously, they undertook a physical transition between the colonial or semi-colonial societies of their birth and the metropolitan arena of their celebrity and influence. I see them as hybrid personalities and as romantic intellects, bringing imaginative fire from the colonial margins to satisfy the orientalist curiosity, and to soothe the fin-de-siècle anxieties, of the imperial centre. Although these peregrinations lead to a juggling of identities and poetic masks, in this dynamic lay both their success as authors and their influence as political and prophetic figures.</p

Oxford University Press eBooks, Apr 13, 2023

The Global Histories of Books, 2017

Victorian Literature and Culture

This brief position paper argues for the importance of understanding Victorian translations, in p... more This brief position paper argues for the importance of understanding Victorian translations, in particular English translations from Asian languages, in relation to the specific places where they were produced and where they were read.

Oxford University Press eBooks, Apr 13, 2023

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Apr 28, 2020

Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Feb 17, 2020

Kipling Journal, May 1, 2018

This chapter focusses on a certain type of imperial encounter: that of the weary traveller or col... more This chapter focusses on a certain type of imperial encounter: that of the weary traveller or colonial servant who meets, unexpectedly, with a misplaced book. In the late nineteenth century, when cheap, ephemeral, often pirated editions were scattered worldwide, such encounters were a common enough occurrence. For the book’s discoverer however, often starved of reading matter in his or her colonial solitude, its appearance is invested with an air of serendipitous mystery. Sometimes the book may be an old favourite: a haunting relic of a lost Britain. Sometimes it is entirely unfamiliar, and can set its finder off on exciting tangents of cross-cultural thought. Drawing on examples from India, Australia, Malaya and North America, Bubb proposes randomness as a paradigm for studying imperial reading cultures.

Modern Asian Studies, 2017

This article makes use of a recently unearthed archive in Sweden, complemented by research in the... more This article makes use of a recently unearthed archive in Sweden, complemented by research in the India Office Records and Maharashtra State Archives, to explore the business networks of the small-scale railway contractor in 1860s Bombay Presidency. The argument centres on the career of one individual, comparing him with several contemporaries. In contrast to their civilian colleagues, freebooting engineers have been a somewhat understudied group. Sometimes lacking formal technical training, and without an official position in colonial India, they were distrusted as profiteering, even corrupt, opportunists. This article will present them instead as a diverse professional class, incorporating Parsis alongside various European nationalities, who became specialists in local milieux, sourcing timber and stone at the lowest prices and retaining the loyalty of itinerant labourers. It will propose that the 1860s cotton boom in western India provided them with a short-lived window of opport...

Oxford University Press eBooks, Apr 13, 2023

The Global Histories of Books, 2017

Victorian Literature and Culture

Oxford University Press eBooks, Apr 13, 2023

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Apr 28, 2020

Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Feb 17, 2020

Kipling Journal, May 1, 2018

Modern Asian Studies, 2017

Meeting Without Knowing It compares Rudyard Kipling and W.B. Yeats in the formative phase of thei... more Meeting Without Knowing It compares Rudyard Kipling and W.B. Yeats in the formative phase of their careers, from their births in 1865 up to 1903. The argument consists of parallel readings wed to a biographic structure. Reading the two poets in parallel often yields remarkable discursive echoes. For example, both men were similarly preoccupied with the visual arts, with heroism, with folklore, balladry and the demotic voice. Both struck vatic postures, and made bids for public authority premised on an appeal to what they considered the "mythopoeic" impulse in fin de siecle culture. Meeting Without Knowing It dentifies these mutual echoes in their poetry and political rhetoric, before charting them against intersections in their lives. Kipling and Yeats were, for much of their careers, irreconcilable political enemies. However, a cross-reading of the two poets' bardic ambitions, heroic tropes, and interpretations of history reveals that, to achieve their opposed political ends, they frequently partook of a common discourse. Supplementing this analysis with biographical context, we can trace these shared concerns to their late nineteenth century artistic upbringing, and to the closely linked social circles that they inhabited in fin de siecle London. It is, in fact, their very mutuality during the 1890s which lent rancor to their ideological division after the Boer War. In turn, acrimony and denunciation only served to bind together all the more intimately, in an argumentative spiral of revolving discourses, two men who were often proximate but who actually met only in cartoons and satirical gossip.