‘Paul Scott’s Hippie’ and Hanging On

This thesis consists of a critical essay examining the evolution of genre and aesthetic in English fiction about South Asia, and a novel about a family of Sri Lankans settled in England. In the essay I question how a contemporary English novelist can place himself amongst the cohort of those earlier writers who have written about South Asia, since the relationship between the former colonists and colonised has changed so greatly. I demonstrate that generic elements were established in the earliest examples of this fiction, which remained notably constant throughout, even up to the late work of Paul Scott. However, I show that the aesthetic attending this Anglo-Indian genre begins with an affirmation of the benefit to the subcontinent which the colonial project might bring and ends with a repudiation of that idea. I seek to break new ground by arguing that the repudiation is so unequivocal in the work of Scott and others that this fiction comes to express an aesthetic of apology. I argue that Scott recognises that it has become possible no longer to write within the Anglo-Indian genre, and that his final novel, Staying On, has evolved into the Commonwealth genre. My novel, Hanging On, is an echo of Scott's last novel. It examines the life of a man who wishes to remain more-or-less British, rather than become independently Sri Lankan, and the legacy of his position as it filters down through the generations of his family in Luton. Cultural difference is now the prime source of conflict, rather than political power, and it aims to demonstrate that cultural hybridity is the paradoxical consequence of the racial rigidity which accompanied the colonial project to its termination.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of East Anglia

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Ashton-Griffiths, Roger

Language dc:language

en