Skip to content
Scan a barcode
Scan
Paperback Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804 Book

ISBN: 082232315X

ISBN13: 9780822323150

Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804

Select Format

Select Condition ThriftBooks Help Icon

Recommended

Format: Paperback

Condition: New

$47.28
50 Available
Ships within 2-3 days

Book Overview

In Tropicopolitans Srinivas Aravamudan reconstructs the colonial imagination of the eighteenth century. By exploring representations of peoples and cultures subjected to colonial discourse, he makes a case for the agency-or the capacity to resist domination-of those oppressed. Aravamudan's analysis of texts that accompanied European commercial and imperial expansion from the Glorious Revolution through the French Revolution reveals the development of anticolonial consciousness prior to the nineteenth century.
"Tropicalization" is the central metaphor of this analysis, a term that incorporates both the construction of various dynamic tropes by which the colonized are viewed and the site of the study, primarily the tropics. Tropicopolitans, then, are those people who bear and resist the representations of colonialist discourse. In readings that expose new relationships between literary representation and colonialism in the eighteenth century, Aravamudan considers such texts as Behn's Oroonoko, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Captain Singleton, Addison's Cato, and Swift's Gulliver's Travels and The Drapier's Letters. He extends his argument to include analyses of Johnson's Rasselas, Beckford's Vathek, Montagu's travel letters, Equiano's autobiography, Burke's political and aesthetic writings, and Abb de Raynal's Histoire des deux Indes. Offering a radical approach to literary history, this study provides new mechanisms for understanding the development of anticolonial agency.
Introducing eighteenth-century studies to a postcolonial hermeneutics, Tropicopolitans will interest scholars engaged in postcolonial studies, eighteenth-century literature, and literary theory.


Customer Reviews

0 rating
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
GoDaddy Verified and Secured