Курсовая с практикой на тему Проблема постклониальной идентичности и культурной идентификации в романах «Ким» Редьярда Киплинга и «Сердце тьмы» Джозефа Конрада

Содержание:

INTRODUCTION 3

1. POSTCOLONIAL PROBLEMS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE 5

Key findings of the 1st chapter 8

2. THE PROBLEM OF POSTCOLONIAL IDENTITY AND CULTURAL IDENTIFICATION 9

2.1. Rudyard Kipling «Kim» 9

2.2. Joseph Conrad «Heart of Darkness» 15

Key findings of 2nd chapter 20

CONCLUSION 22

LIST OF REFERENCES 25

Введение:

INTRODUCTION

Relevance of the research topic. The middle of the XX century was the time of the collapse of colonial empires and the emergence of new nation-states. In some cases, this process was accompanied by bloody wars, as in the case of French Indochina, in others it took place peacefully, through the conclusion of treaties and agreements. The collapse of the British Empire — the largest empire of the first half of the 20th century — was characterized by the desire of the British political elite to avoid unnecessary conflicts in the conditions of the economy undermined after the Second World War. Overcoming the post-war economic crisis led to the fact that the conditions for migrants to enter the country were relaxed in the UK, primarily to attract cheap labor from the former colonies. Since the late 1940s, wave after wave of new flows of migrants have been arriving on the territory of the United Kingdom.

The founders of «postcolonial studies» were F. Fanon, E. Sayd, X. Bhabha. The texts generated by them and their followers — journalistic, scientific, artistic — have become a certain linguistic phenomenon or, as this phenomenon is often called in the West, postcolonial discourse.

The object of the study is «postcolonial studies», or a complex intellectual and psychological space formed by a complex of ideologically close journalistic, academic, artistic texts aimed at rethinking the cultural heritage of colonialism and created by authors primarily of non-European origin, closely related to the former colonies of European states by ethnic roots.

The subject of the study is the process of rethinking the colonial «past» and related problems of modernity or postcolonial discourse as an integral part of the collapse of the world system of colonialism and the formation of a multicultural society in Western Europe and, in particular, Great Britain in the second half of the XX century.

The aim of the work is to study the problem of postclonial identity and cultural identification in the novels «Kim» by Rudyard Kipling and «Heart of Darkness» by Joseph Conrad.

To achieve this goal, the following tasks were set:

1) Consider the context of the emergence and development of postcolonial discourse;

2) To study the problem of postclonial identity and cultural identification in the novels «Kim» by Rudyard Kipling;

3) To study the problem of postclonial identity and cultural identification in the novels «Heart of Darkness» by Joseph Conrad;

The chronological framework of the study mainly covers the period of the second half of the XX century. The initial milestone is due to the end of the Second World War, the subsequent process of disintegration of the world system of colonialism, in particular, the British Colonial Empire, and a sharp increase in migration flows from former colonies to the metropolis.

The methodology is based on the principle of historicism, i.e. the study was conducted in the context of a certain historical epoch. In addition, the phenomenon was considered in self-development. An interdisciplinary approach has been applied in the study. We can talk about the use of methods of both history proper and sociology, philology, linguistics, cultural studies. The direction of interdisciplinary research has long been mastered in the West, where the synthesis of methods of philosophy, linguistics, semiotics, psychoanalysis, history, etc. has been fruitfully used.

The theoretical and methodological basis also consists of a number of concepts: multiculturalism, postcolonial discourse, postcolonial studies.

Postcolonial discourse characterizes not only the situation in the intellectual sphere of the second half of the XX century, but also a whole set of cognitive perspectives. The prefix «post» is not connected with time, but with a certain perspective of vision, from which various problems are learned and analyzed. The source base of the study is based on the species classification of

Заключение:

The spread of the English language turned out to be closely connected with the emergence of the phenomenon of postcolonial (PC) culture and postcolonial literature. As a result of the collapse of empires in the second half of the twentieth century. many independent states appeared on the world map, which arose on the site of former colonies. Postcolonial culture is a culture that has developed in the former colonies, incorporating elements of the culture of the colonialists and the peoples enslaved by them, has the property of hybridity.

The influence of the culture of the conquered country on the culture and literature of the colonizers can be different. First, this literature becomes «post-colonial» in the sense that it is in a state of interaction with the culture of the conquered country. In addition, after the collapse of empires, a number of residents of former colonies come to the territory of the metropolis, becoming the bearer of two cultural traditions at the same time. A striking example of such mutual influence of cultures is the literature of Great Britain at the end of the 20th century. It will not be an exaggeration to say that post-colonial literature is a phenomenon, the emergence of which is associated with specific historical events of the second half of the 20th century. The post-colonial novel delivers a tangible blow to the concept of cultural Eurocentrism, expanding the scope of the depiction of literature, introducing cultural norms and traditions that were previously closed to the European reader, and also giving them a rare opportunity to evaluate themselves from the outside.

It is obvious that the result of the development of British imperialism was not only the existence of colonies and the spread of the English language in remote parts of the world. No less significant is the phenomenon of the formation of the imperial mentality of the dominant nation, the British, their hegemonic self-esteem and self-consciousness, which led, in particular, to the emergence and development of an influential literary trend of colonial literature. On the other hand, the imperial mentality itself was formed under the influence of cultural and literary models reflected in the literary works of the colonial trend.

R. Kipling’s novel «Kim» presents a variety of mimicry options. The Bengali Hurri Babu is a typical Oriental who accepts Western cultural patterns. This character, in the light of British colonial policy, can be an ideal representative of the «class of interpreters» («a class of interpreters») standing between the colonizers and the colonized. In the image of the main character of the novel, Kimball O’Hara, a multidimensional bidirectional mimicry is shown, the result of which, according to the author’s plan, should be a kind of new identity. It is based on the ambivalent acceptance and denial of the local Indian (in all its diversity) and English components of its elements, and therefore correlates with the hybrid space of colonial cultural contact.

Obviously, according to R. Kipling’s plan, the result of this mimicry in no way undermines the authority of colonial ideology. From the point of view of modern postcolonial theory, this idea can be explained by the desire to reduce the dangerous effect of a «blurred», parodic copy of the colonizer by introducing authentic oriental features of the colonized into the cultural model proposed for imitation. In this regard, we can agree with L. James’ opinion that Kipling’s vision and understanding of the cultural phenomenon of the «other» opens the way for the emergence of postcolonial studies.

Conrad proceeds from the recognition of the unsolvability of the contradictions of the world, so his artistic world has everything. The action takes place against the background of nature, in comparison with which man is ridiculously small, and human history is ridiculously arrogant, presumptuous. Conrad’s world is truly tragic — it is full of terrible secrets for which there are no words in human language and which it is better to remain nameless, hence the technique so important for Conrad and the poetics of modernism — silence, omission of the most important. The plot, content, and style of the story are inseparably merged in order to achieve a single, common effect, which consists in the layering, ambiguity, and delightful complexity of the work, which opens its new sides to the reader with each reading.

Both aestheticism with its mannered affectation, reminiscent of late Romanticism, and modernism with its harsh, harsh view of the world and man, which fully absorbed the lessons of realism and naturalism, are equally indebted to the literature of the XIX century — and both directions at the turn of the century were equally perceived as new, rebellious. However, the promotion of different complexes of problems to the center and different ways of solving them determined the different specific weight of these trends in the history of literature from the point of view of historical perspective — aestheticism remained a monument of a certain era, while modernism at the next stage of literary development will turn into the leading direction of world literature.

Фрагмент текста работы:

1. POSTCOLONIAL PROBLEMS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The image of the East, created in the English novel of the 50-60s of the twentieth century, is based on the maxim set by R. Kipling: «The West is the West, the East is the East, and they will never come together…». The opposite of the West and the East is defined in most works as the opposite of Chaos and Order, the opposition of one’s own / someone else’s is gradually eroded and replaced by the opposition of I / the other, but in many ways this is due to the erosion of the national community of the British-Europeans — Westerners, who in one form or another assimilate in the East, and not through recognition similarities of any characteristics of a western and an eastern person. Even if the impassability of the border between a Western person, a carrier of culture and a reasonable beginning, and an Eastern person, a carrier of chaos and often base passions, is not directly stated, it is implied a priori.

We can say that the image of the East fits perfectly into the framework that allows us to call it oriented to the colonial stereotype, however, the ideas of the East are characterized by internal development, which at the same time assumes a dynamic change in the ideas of the national «we», or rather, the rejection of the category of the national «we» in favor of the national «I», from collective identity in favor of individual, unique national identity. We will consider these features of the postcolonial British novel by the example of the works of G. Green «Comedians», «The Quiet American» and E. Burgess «The Malay Trilogy».

Since the 30s, a special national type has been created in the work of G. Green (the novel «England gave birth to Me»), this is the type of hero «detached» from the national soil, a kind of «tumbleweed», whose genetic connection with the motherland is determined by the powerful pressure of the Victorian stereotype on his consciousness. This stereotype can be both a subject of rejection («Comedians», «The Quiet American») and a subject of overcoming («Traveling with an Aunt»). One way or another, the hero is in constant dialogue with him, including with the part of him that dictates to the «real Englishman» an imperial