The Rhetoric of English India

Tracing a genealogy of colonial discourse, Suleri focuses on paradigmatic moments in the multiple stories generated by the British colonization of the Indian subcontinent. Both the literature of imperialism and its postcolonial aftermath emerge here as a series of guilty transactions between two cultures that are equally evasive and uncertain of their own authority. "A dense, witty, and richly allusive book . . . an extremely valuable contribution to postcolonial cultural studies as well as to the whole area of literary criticism."—Jean Sudrann, __Choice__

Tracing a genealogy of colonial discourse, Suleri focuses on paradigmatic moments in the multiple stories generated by the British colonization of the Indian subcontinent. Both the literature of imperialism and its postcolonial aftermath emerge here as a series of guilty transactions between two cultures that are equally evasive and uncertain of their own authority.

A dense, witty, and richly allusive book . . . an extremely valuable contribution to postcolonial cultural studies as well as to the whole area of literary criticism.—Jean Sudrann, Choice

Contents Acknowledgments 1. The Rhetoric of English India 2. Edmund Burke and the Indian Sublime 3. Reading the Trial of Warren Hastings 4. The Feminine Picturesque 5. The Adolescence of Kim 6. Forster’s Imperial Erotic 7. Naipaul’s Arrival 8. Salman Rushdie: Embodiments of Blasphemy, Censorships of Shame Notes Index "THIS WAS HOW IT HAPPENED; AND THE TRUTH IS ALSO AN ALLEGORY OF Empire," claims Kipling's narrator, as he opens with grim brevity the quasi tale of 1886, "Naboth."