Lecture slides for Day 14 in ELIT 46C

1. ELIT 46C
Day 14
COLONIAL HORRORS
AND COLONIAL SUBJECTIVITY

2. Business/Participation
Midterm, Part 1, back. Mean=32.
Midterm, Part 2, will start trickling back this
afternoon (and into the weekend).
After both parts are finished, I will figure out
whether I want to curve it.
Next week:
Office hours are canceled for the entire week.
I will be available by appointment on Tuesday
morning (only).
I will be available all week on email.
Dr. Kim Palmore will lecture on Thursday.
Participation today:
2 points for individual contributions: 1 per
thing you say.
1 point for group report-back.

3. The British Colonial Project—continued.

4. A brief history of India as a colony
1600: British East India Company (EIC) founded to trade with Indian subcontinent and China.
◦ spices, saltpetre, tea, silk, porcelain.
1757: began to conquer and rule large swaths of India, by 1778, had 67,000 troops (generally
Indians).
1773: EIC opium trade with China begins.
1857: Indian Mutiny (or Indian Rebellion). Failed large-scale
rebellion put down by the British. Millions of Indians were
killed in retaliation. (British public was bloodthirsty—including
Dickens.)
1858: The British government takes control of India from the EIC.
Rules India directly. This period is known as the British Raj.
(Lasts until 1947—Gandhi.)
1876: Queen Victorian proclaimed “Empress of India.”

5. The Indian famine of 1876-79
What causes famine?
◦ El Niño? Well, yes. But…
◦ Amartya Sen: “Famine is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the
characteristic of there not being enough food to eat.”
Was there enough food grown in India during this period?
Why couldn’t the poor eat it?
◦ being exported to England.
◦ being sold at too high a price.
How did the British government respond? (Led by horrible poet Lord Lytton.)
◦ refused to institute price controls or to interfere with “market forces.”
◦ hesitated to initiate relief—monetary or food.
◦ continued to tax the poor (why?).
How many people died?
Famines in India in 1876-79 and 1896-1902:
mortality estimates between 12 and 29 million people.

6. Takeaways
1. Some of the vaunted progress of the 19C is implicated in this famine:
◦ Railroads
◦ Telegraphs
◦ Proto-globalization
2. Much of 18-19C English political and social thought provided rationales or alibis for these
murders:
◦ “the invisible hand” and markets (Adam Smith, originally), but 19C political economists, as well.
◦ Malthus: overpopulation as a threat.
◦ Bentham: relief creates dependency.
3. This isn’t the first time much of this happened. As Davis makes clear, these events are echoes
of things that happened earlier in another British colony: Ireland.

7. Ireland as colony
1801: Acts of Union assumes Ireland (the whole island) into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland. Cements British rule.
◦ Major recurring issue: Anglo-Irish Protestant minority, who is close to England, historically held political
power; Celtic Catholic majority, held less political power and influence.
1845-52: Great Famine (“Irish Potato Famine”)
◦ 1 million died; 1 million emigrated.
◦ British government mostly took a “market-based” approach to relief (meaning none), alternating with punitive
measures.
◦ allowed massive food exports from Ireland to England.
◦ limited food aid program.
◦ caused a great deal of resentment toward the British government. Raised possibility of
rebellion.
◦ increasing demands for Irish “home rule” in second half of the century.
1867: Fenian (Irish independence movement) bombing in London kills 12 people;
attempt at Fenian insurrection in Ireland fails.
◦ England says, “F*ck you.”
A full-blown Irish nationalism starts to develop.

8. William Butler Yeats: early life
1865-1939
Anglo-Irish, born in Dublin.
Family moved to London in 1874, then back to
Dublin in 1880. (Also spent time in County
Sligo in Ireland.)
1889: meets and falls in love with Irish
nationalist Maud Gonne.
1890s: WBY founds the “Irish Literary
Society”—part of a broader movement to
revive interest in Irish literary culture.
One key preoccupation/project
(esp. in early years): finding ways to
incorporate Irish experiences, folklore,
language into English poetry tradition.
◦ “dialect which gets from Gaelic its syntax and
keeps its still partly Tudor vocabulary.”
◦ WBY loves and is drawn to both traditions—is
thoroughly English and Irish.
But what does this “dual artistic citizenship”
lead to?
What kind of literary work does it produce?

9. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
The island in Lough Gill, near Sligo.

10. “The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
Group work: sitting near you—threes and
fours.
What are some oppositions that you see in
this poem? What are some opposing forces or
ideas?
And ultimately, where do these oppositions
come together? Where do they reside?
So how do you see his dual life--of both
English and Irish culture--being played out
here?

11. Irish Nationalism—
Political
1886: first Home Rule bill fails in British parliament.
1912: third Home Rule bill passes, but delayed implementation after WWI starts.
1916: Easter Rising: armed insurrection in Ireland against British rule.
◦ approximately 1000 fighters, led by poets and philosophers.
◦ several days of fighting in Dublin and a few other locations.
◦ British army suppressed it brutally.
◦ 1,800 Irish participants sent to prisons or internment camps.
◦ leaders of the movement executed by firing squad.
There was not much popular support in Ireland for the uprising, until England executed the leaders. This made
people mad—pushed public support away from home rule to a more radical Irish nationalism.
1919: Irish parliament declares independence. There’s a war.
1922: Entire island becomes Irish Republic. Two days later, Northern Ireland leaves and becomes part of the
United Kingdom again.
Yeats’s beloved Maud Gonne was very much involved in this more political strain of Irish nationalism, as were
many of his friends and comrades.
◦ he himself was somewhat ambivalent about the nationalist political project throughout the 1890s and 1900s.

12. “Easter, 1916”
What do you think when you hear the phrase
“terrible beauty”?
◦ (Not in the context of the poem, please. We’ll
get to that.)
In what sense is “terrible” being used here?
What would make beauty “terrible”?
What would make terror “beautiful”?
What are some examples of terrible beauty?

13. Change, transformation, terrible beauty.
There are multiple developments in this poem. What are they? Who/what changes?
What is the “terrible beauty” here?
◦ what is terrible? What is frightening?
◦ what is beautiful?
The “Revolutionary Sublime” (Marie-Hélène Huet).
◦ What is the sublime?
◦ How might you feel the sublime in the context of Revolution?
What might “Easter” have to do with any of this?
And finally, how might this poem speak give us a sense of Yeats’s colonial subjectivity?

14. Reading for next week.
Be warned: the amount of reading picks up
again next week. And it gets harder. Start now.
For Tuesday:
1. James Joyce: “The Dead” (2282-2311).
2. T. S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock” (2524-27)
For Thursday:
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (2530-2543).