1) The document discusses a class on colonial horrors and colonial subjectivities. It provides an overview of British colonial rule in India from 1600-1858 and details the Indian famine of 1876-79 that killed between 12-29 million people due to British policies. 2) It then discusses Ireland as another British colony, covering key events like the 1801 Acts of Union, the Great Irish Famine of 1845-52, and the rise of Irish nationalism in the late 19th century. 3) The document analyzes several Irish writers and their exploration of Irish identity and nationalism, including William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and how their works illustrate the conflict between Irish nationalism and cosmopolitanism.

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

2. Business/Participation
Midterm back:
◦ Mean: 88 (out of 100).
◦ 22 As; 16 Bs; 9 C or below.
◦ Scores on all three versions not significantly
different.
◦ I’m very happy with this mean and happy
enough with the distribution. No curve.
◦ Check my arithmetic on your exam. (See me
after class if you think there are issues.)
Unusual Office Hours next week:
◦ Tues, Wed, Thurs: 8:30-9:30 AM
◦ Wed: 1:30-2:30 PM
Participation today:
◦ 2 points for individual contributions.

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 triggered crop failures, 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? Yes.
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.
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. 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”
Last stanza:
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. (9-12)
How do you see a dual life existing here?
Where is the site of conflict in this poem?

10. 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.

11. “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?

12. 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
give us a sense of Yeats’s colonial subjectivity?

13. James Joyce
(1882-1941)
Born in Dublin, oldest of ten surviving children.
Catholic, middle-class family “on the way down.”
Jesuit education, then University College Dublin.
Lapsed as a Catholic.
June 16, 1904: goes public with relationship with Nora Barnacle
(chambermaid).
1904: moved to the continent (Trieste, Zurich, Paris)
1914: Dubliners (short story collection, includes “The Dead”).
1916: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
1922: Ulysses
1933: United States v. One Book Called Ulysses. Ulysses ruled not
to be “obscene.” Ruling allowed for literary free expression.
1939: Finnegans Wake (inventing a new language?)
1941: dies in Zurich.

14. Gabriel and Irish Nationalism
“I have found out that you write for The Daily Express. Now aren’t you ashamed
of yourself?
--Why should I be ashamed of myself? asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes and trying
to smile.
--Well, I’m ashamed of you, said Miss Ivors frankly. To say you’d write for a rag like
that. I didn’t think you were a West Briton.
A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel’s face. It was true that he wrote a
literary column every Wednesday in The Daily Express, for which he was paid
fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West Briton surely. […] He did not
know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature was above
politics.
[…]
--And why do you to France and Belgium, said Miss Ivors, instead of visiting your
own land?
--Well, said Gabriel, it’s partly to keep in touch with the languages and partly for a
change.
--And haven’t you your own language to keep in touch with—Irish? asked Miss
Ivors.
--Well, said Gabriel, if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language.
[…]
--And haven’t you your own land to visit, continued Miss Ivors, that you know
nothing of, your own people, and your own country?
--O, to tell you the truth, retorted Gabriel suddenly, I’m sick of my own country,
sick of it!” (2290-91)
What do we know about
Irish Nationalism in this
period?
The episode with Miss Ivors.
How do you read Gabriel’s
attitude here?
What is the conflict?

15. Irish Nationalism vs. Cosmopolitan Aestheticism
Ivors’s nationalism vs. Gabriel’s cosmopolitan
aestheticism.
Gabriel’s refusal to accept “Irish” as his
language—because, in an important sense, it’s
not.
His disgust at Ireland—do you see if elsewhere
in this story?
But Gabriel is shaken. He can’t give up entirely on
Ireland here.
◦ celebration of “authentic” Irish tradition in his pompous
toast.
“--I feel more strongly with every recurring year that
our country has no tradition which does it so much
honour and which it should guard so jealously as that
of its hospitality. […] I fear that this new generation,
educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those
qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour
which belonged to an older day.” (2299)
It’s still “our” country and he finds himself—maybe
sincerely and maybe not—praising its traditions.
Illustration of his fragmented self. Doesn’t know how
to live in this world.

16. Joyce’s own conflict with Irish identity
Joyce himself ended up recognizing
and hating his options. Instead, he
chose exile.
“No one who has any self-respect stays
in Ireland, but flees afar as though
from country that has undergone the
visitation of an angered Jove.” (Critical
Writings 171).

17. Reading for next week.
For Tuesday:
◦ 1. Finish Joyce, “The Dead”
◦ 2. T. S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (2524-27)
For Thursday:
◦ 1. Rupert Brooke: “The Soldier” (2019).
◦ 2. Siegfried Sassoon: “’They’” (2023); “On Passing the New
Menin Gate” (2026).
◦ 3. Isaac Rosenberg: “Louse Hunting” (2031).
◦ 4. Wilfred Owen: “Anthem for Doomed Youth” (2034-35);
“Apologia Pro Poemate Meo” (2035-36); “Dulce Et Decorum
Est” (2037); From Owen’s Letters to His Mother and “Preface”
(2041-42).
◦ 5. May Wedderburn Cannan: “Rouen” (2043-44).