Thesis
A writer's progress: the politics of representation in David Dabydeen's A harlot's progress
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2008
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/101868
Abstract
The difficulty in situating – let along reading – the postcolonial novel is explicitly foregrounded in Dabydeen‘s A Harlot's Progress. Dabydeen engages with a host of eighteenth century English authors who visually and textually represented blacks. As his title suggests, there is a connection and critique being made to William Hogarth‘s print series of the same name published in 1732. Dabydeen writes the story from the perspective of a black boy in plate II of the series. Through Mungo, Dabydeen challenges the 'politics' of Mungo‘s representation in the eighteenth century. He explores Hogarth and Thomas Pringle‘s, the abolitionist who attempts to record Mungo‘s narrative, need to negotiate an overwhelming discourse of commercial that controlled not only their own pens and presses but the bodies of their textual subjects. By exposing these exterior influences, Dabydeen also makes a critique at the contemporary politics of canonicity. Even the era of the expanding literary canon, Dabydeen asks us why now we are drawn to Mungo. Is it because we want to appreciate him on an equal and human level, or is it simply a result of postcolonial critical discourses that still construe him as lacking in a self-same manner as his original inscription? My argument is simply that Dabydeen uses Mungo to expose active resistance that was evident at the time of his inscription as well as to criticize our v contemporary urge to continually figure him as passive.
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Details
- Title
- A writer's progress
- Creators
- Steve Holmes
- Contributors
- David. Dabydeen (Degree Supervisor)Jon Hegglund (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Identifiers
- 99900525381301842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis