"""This, This Is England, but We Only Passed By."" Reclamations and Subversions of English National Identity in Works by Woolf, Waugh, Rhys and Naipaul"

"Orlando and Decline and Fall lament the ""decline"" of an aristocratically-dominated, rural England forever changed by the incursions of modernity, the bourgeoisie, and colonial subjects. V.S. Naipaul's postcolonial work The Enigma of Arrival, problematizes the very notion of a past, perfect England and an English national identity available to all English subjects, revealing instead that a static English past never existed, and that Naipaul will never wholly participate in the English national identity that interpellates him as a subject, not a citizen. Jean Rhys's postcolonial text, Voyage in the Dark, painfully exemplifies the fallout of a marketed English national identity and fantasy England on colonial subjects in its depiction of Anna Morgan's alienation and disenchantment in England. Nevertheless, despite Naipaul and Rhys's poignant portrayals of the alienation experienced by colonial subjects in England, their texts demonstrate the power of postcolonial texts in articulating an English national identity that is neither white nor aristocratic."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Olson, Lucia Thomas

Contributors dc:contributor

• James Hurt

• Literature, Caribbean

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9912335

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/81494