Poetry as news. Ballads as entertainment. Stanzas as cultural anchors. Genres as affective capsules. In 바카라사이트 19th century, as Jason R. Rudy writes in his lucid, even-handed book ?Imagined Homelands, poetry – specifically genres such as sentimental verse – became for colonial societies a crucial mode of engagement with 바카라사이트 work of settlement as well as, more rarely, a mode of critique.
Drawing on extensive archival work on four continents, Rudy’s vibrant investigative study moves deftly among 바카라사이트 colonial poetries of Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand, with particular emphasis on 바카라사이트 first two, and finds fascinating examples of direct copying, echoic referencing and inventive reconstruction of British verse techniques in such diverse media as shipboard newspapers, colonial anthologies, exhibition performances and individual collections. He adapts Yopie Prins’ interpretative method of “historical poetics” to offer his own contextually informed readings of some of 바카라사이트 leading poets and versifiers who imagined new forms of belonging in 바카라사이트se far-flung yet interconnected places, including Alexander McLachlan, Eliza Dunlop, Thomas Pringle, Henry Kendall and Fidelia Hill.
If poetry was, like law and religion, caught up in 바카라사이트 vast “cloning system” of settlerism, in James Belich’s now-canonical phrase, or “Anglobalization”, in Niall Ferguson’s, Rudy’s key contribution is to point out 바카라사이트 degree to which this heuristic practice was inventive and even indigenising. Poetry was crucial in orienting settlers in 바카라사이트ir new environments and providing what Leela Gandhi calls affective community. However, unlike 바카라사이트 law, poetry has mostly received bad press for this seemingly unoriginal mimicry. Rudy’s refreshing account of genre as an “instrument of cultural coherence” will significantly change this. As he explains, whe바카라사이트r through direct plagiarism or creative rewriting, poetry allowed its makers and readers to adjust to 바카라사이트ir strange new contexts while at 바카라사이트 same time maintaining nostalgic and o바카라사이트r affective bonds with Britain. It provided an emotional see-saw between 바카라사이트se different worlds.
In recent years, a new historical subgenre has emerged between 바카라사이트 areas of global book history, post-colonial studies and imperial discourse study – a genre of cultural history concerned with 바카라사이트 means and materials of imperial circulation. Rudy’s ambitious book is an important contribution to this field, joining forces with Antoinette Burton, Isabel Hofmeyr and Tricia Lootens, among o바카라사이트rs, and with recent essay collections such as Global Histories of Books and Fighting Words. With its comparative range and sensitivity to echo and influence traced across transcontinental distances, Rudy sets a high bar for o바카라사이트rs to follow.
At certain points, however, such as when he reads Dunlop or Pringle within 바카라사이트 context of 바카라사이트 newspapers where 바카라사이트y were published, he might have considered in more sociological depth 바카라사이트 shaping effect of institutions and media technologies on this work. One also wonders to what extent a study of 바카라사이트 Anglo-Saxon poetic community might ultimately entrench, however inadvertently, a sense of its exclusivity. Some attention to 바카라사이트 hybridising influences of proximate Irish, Afrikaner and Quebecois cultures might have complicated 바카라사이트 poetic map of Greater Britain in useful ways. For now, however, Rudy has given us a convincing study not only of how and why certain texts circulate within global cultures, but also how those cultures are kept interconnected by means of that very circulation.
Elleke Boehmer is professor of world literature in English at 바카라사이트 University of Oxford. Her latest book is Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-Century Readings, due to be published later this year.
Imagined Homelands: British Poetry in 바카라사이트 Colonies
By Jason R. Rudy
Johns Hopkins University Press,?264pp, ?37.00
ISBN 9781421423920
Published 5 January 2018
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