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Imperial Masochism : British Fiction, Fantasy, and Social Class /

British imperialism's favorite literary narrative might seem to be conquest. But real British conquests also generated a surprising cultural obsession with suffering, sacrifice, defeat, and melancholia. "There was," writes John Kucich, "seemingly a different crucifixion scene mar...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Kucich, John
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:Inglés
Published: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2007.
Series:Book collections on Project MUSE.
Subjects:
Online Access:Texto completo
Description
Summary:British imperialism's favorite literary narrative might seem to be conquest. But real British conquests also generated a surprising cultural obsession with suffering, sacrifice, defeat, and melancholia. "There was," writes John Kucich, "seemingly a different crucifixion scene marking the historical gateway to each colonial theater." In Imperial Masochism, Kucich reveals the central role masochistic forms of voluntary suffering played in late-nineteenth-century British thinking about imperial politics and class identity. Placing the colonial writers Robert Louis Stevenson, Olive Schreiner, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad in their cultural context, Kucich shows how the ideological and psychological dynamics of empire, particularly its reorganization of class identities at the colonial periphery, depended on figurations of masochism. --From publisher's description
Physical Description:1 online resource (270 pages).
ISBN:9781400827404