{"title":"“从笔开始”:塔尼卡·古普塔《远大前程》改编中的反殖民抵抗","authors":"Marlena Tronicke","doi":"10.1515/jcde-2022-0022","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Tanika Gupta’s neo-Victorian, postcolonial rewriting of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (2011) examines how India and Britain’s colonial history continues to shape both countries until the present day. The play is set in and around Calcutta in the years following 1861. Gupta thus not only relocates Pip’s transformation from village boy to metropolitan businessman to nineteenth-century India but also to a particularly fragile moment in the history of the British Empire: a subcontinent grappling with the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, facing the early years of the British Raj. Gupta interrogates narrow understandings of “Victorian” as located within the British Isles, explicating the contrapuntal reading practice that Edward W. Said calls for when highlighting Victorian literature’s implicit endorsement of imperialist ideologies and politics. Examining the play’s engagement with imperial power structures, this article centres on those moments that hint at the destabilisation of, if not revolt against, British rule. Gupta juxtaposes canonised narratives of undisturbed imperial hegemony with a tale of incessant colonial resistance. In doing so, she challenges those historiographical as well as fictional (neo-)Victorian texts that silence the sustained efforts and influence of anticolonial movements and that frame the history of Empire in terms of continuity rather than rupture.","PeriodicalId":41187,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"“Through the Pen to Begin with”: Anticolonial Resistance in Tanika Gupta’s Adaptation of Great Expectations\",\"authors\":\"Marlena Tronicke\",\"doi\":\"10.1515/jcde-2022-0022\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Abstract Tanika Gupta’s neo-Victorian, postcolonial rewriting of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (2011) examines how India and Britain’s colonial history continues to shape both countries until the present day. The play is set in and around Calcutta in the years following 1861. Gupta thus not only relocates Pip’s transformation from village boy to metropolitan businessman to nineteenth-century India but also to a particularly fragile moment in the history of the British Empire: a subcontinent grappling with the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, facing the early years of the British Raj. Gupta interrogates narrow understandings of “Victorian” as located within the British Isles, explicating the contrapuntal reading practice that Edward W. Said calls for when highlighting Victorian literature’s implicit endorsement of imperialist ideologies and politics. Examining the play’s engagement with imperial power structures, this article centres on those moments that hint at the destabilisation of, if not revolt against, British rule. Gupta juxtaposes canonised narratives of undisturbed imperial hegemony with a tale of incessant colonial resistance. In doing so, she challenges those historiographical as well as fictional (neo-)Victorian texts that silence the sustained efforts and influence of anticolonial movements and that frame the history of Empire in terms of continuity rather than rupture.\",\"PeriodicalId\":41187,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English\",\"volume\":null,\"pages\":null},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.4000,\"publicationDate\":\"2022-11-01\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"1\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2022-0022\",\"RegionNum\":0,\"RegionCategory\":null,\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"0\",\"JCRName\":\"THEATER\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Contemporary Drama in English","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2022-0022","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"THEATER","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
摘要
塔尼卡·古普塔对查尔斯·狄更斯的《远大前程》(2011)进行了新维多利亚时代、后殖民时代的改写,探讨了印度和英国的殖民历史如何继续塑造这两个国家,直到今天。该剧以1861年后的加尔各答及其周边地区为背景。因此,古普塔不仅将皮普从乡村男孩到都市商人的转变重新定位到19世纪的印度,而且还将其置于大英帝国历史上一个特别脆弱的时刻:一个次大陆正在努力应对1857年印度叛乱的后果,面对英国统治的早期。古普塔质疑了对不列颠群岛“维多利亚”的狭隘理解,解释了爱德华·w·赛义德(Edward W. Said)在强调维多利亚文学对帝国主义意识形态和政治的含蓄认可时所呼吁的对位式阅读实践。本文考察了该剧与帝国权力结构的关系,重点关注那些暗示英国统治不稳定(如果不是反抗的话)的时刻。古普塔将未受干扰的帝国霸权的经典叙述与持续不断的殖民抵抗的故事并列。在这样做的过程中,她挑战了那些历史编纂和虚构的(新)维多利亚文本,这些文本沉默了反殖民运动的持续努力和影响,并从连续性而不是断裂的角度构建了帝国的历史。
“Through the Pen to Begin with”: Anticolonial Resistance in Tanika Gupta’s Adaptation of Great Expectations
Abstract Tanika Gupta’s neo-Victorian, postcolonial rewriting of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (2011) examines how India and Britain’s colonial history continues to shape both countries until the present day. The play is set in and around Calcutta in the years following 1861. Gupta thus not only relocates Pip’s transformation from village boy to metropolitan businessman to nineteenth-century India but also to a particularly fragile moment in the history of the British Empire: a subcontinent grappling with the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, facing the early years of the British Raj. Gupta interrogates narrow understandings of “Victorian” as located within the British Isles, explicating the contrapuntal reading practice that Edward W. Said calls for when highlighting Victorian literature’s implicit endorsement of imperialist ideologies and politics. Examining the play’s engagement with imperial power structures, this article centres on those moments that hint at the destabilisation of, if not revolt against, British rule. Gupta juxtaposes canonised narratives of undisturbed imperial hegemony with a tale of incessant colonial resistance. In doing so, she challenges those historiographical as well as fictional (neo-)Victorian texts that silence the sustained efforts and influence of anticolonial movements and that frame the history of Empire in terms of continuity rather than rupture.