Forays into the attic: The postcolonial fiction of Jean Rhys and J. M. Coetzee
type: CreativeWork
description: "The dissertation examines the writing of Jean Rhys and J. M. Coetzee and its postcolonial interventions in modernism and postmodernism. Chapter I, ""The Postcolonial Sensibilities of the Native Alien,"" focuses on current postcolonial theoretical debates on resistance and authenticity; it then positions Rhys and Coetzee as ""native alien"" or postcolonized elite writers, problematizing their presentation of difference and resistance. Chapters II and III are titled ""Voyage in the Dark: Inscriptions in Text and History,"" and ""Receding/Recursive Margins in Wide Sargasso Sea: 'Who Knows What's Up in the Attic?' thinspace""; they focus on Rhys's fictional strategy of borrowing the rage and resistances of other narratives of dispossession. In both chapters, I examine Rhys's formal dismantling of the epistemes of humanist-modernism, particularly her use of mimicry, the uncanny and anti-Bildung, her denaturalizing of literary impressionism and the gothic, and the resistance to ""knowability"" in her landscaping of the Caribbean."
abstract: "The dissertation examines the writing of Jean Rhys and J. M. Coetzee and its postcolonial interventions in modernism and postmodernism. Chapter I, ""The Postcolonial Sensibilities of the Native Alien,"" focuses on current postcolonial theoretical debates on resistance and authenticity; it then positions Rhys and Coetzee as ""native alien"" or postcolonized elite writers, problematizing their presentation of difference and resistance. Chapters II and III are titled ""Voyage in the Dark: Inscriptions in Text and History,"" and ""Receding/Recursive Margins in Wide Sargasso Sea: 'Who Knows What's Up in the Attic?' thinspace""; they focus on Rhys's fictional strategy of borrowing the rage and resistances of other narratives of dispossession. In both chapters, I examine Rhys's formal dismantling of the epistemes of humanist-modernism, particularly her use of mimicry, the uncanny and anti-Bildung, her denaturalizing of literary impressionism and the gothic, and the resistance to ""knowability"" in her landscaping of the Caribbean."
author: Sagar, Aparajita
language: eng
keywords: Literature, Modern, Literature, African, Literature, Caribbean, Literature, English
date published: 2011-05-07T12:37:30Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:25:15Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/20378