Affective Disorders: Emotion in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

200 Pages·2019·1.908 MB·English

by  Bede Scott

Affective Disorders
Postcolonialism across the Disciplines 21
Postcolonialism across the Disciplines
Series Editors
Graham Huggan, University of Leeds
Andrew Thompson, University of Exeter
Postcolonialism across the Disciplines showcases alternative directions for
postcolonial studies. It is in part an attempt to counteract the dominance
in colonial and postcolonial studies of one particular discipline – English
literary/cultural studies – and to make the case for a combination of
disciplinary knowledges as the basis for contemporary postcolonial
critique. Edited by leading scholars, the series aims to be a seminal
contribution to the field, spanning the traditional range of disciplines
represented in postcolonial studies but also those less acknowledged. It
will also embrace new critical paradigms and examine the relationship
between the transnational/cultural, the global and the postcolonial.
Affective Disorders
Emotion in Colonial
and Postcolonial Literature
Bede Scott
Affective Disorders
Liverpool University Press
First published 2019 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool L69 7ZU
Copyright © 2019 Bede Scott
The right of Bede Scott to be identified as the author of this book has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978-1-78694-170-1 cased
epdf ISBN 978-1-78694-963-9
Typeset in Amerigo by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster
For Ingrid and Sappho

Contents
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 Anger: Naguib Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley 31
2 Reticence: Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy 55
3 Jealousy: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’ Dom Casmurro 79
4 Boredom: Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August: An Indian Story 105
5 Fear: Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost 127
6 Stuplimity: Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games 147
Works Cited 169
Index 183
vii

Acknowledgements
Io we a large debt of gratitude to many people, but I would like to
mention, in particular, Graham Huggan, Sharanya Jayawickrama, Chloe
Johnson, John McLeod, Michael Neill, Francesca Orsini, Ato Quayson,
and Janet Wilson. For their congeniality over the last decade, I would
also like to thank my colleagues, both past and present, in the Division
of English at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. And on
a more personal note, I am especially grateful to my mother, Naomi
Estall, and my father, Dick Scott, for all the support they have provided
over the years (despite the intervening time zones).
Earlier versions of some of the chapters have appeared in the Journal
of Arabic Literature (42.1 [2011]), Contemporary Literature (53.3 [2012]), the
Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry (3.2 [2016]), and Modern
Fiction Studies (65.2 [2019]). I am grateful to the editors and publishers of
these journals for their permission to use this material in the following
pages.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Liz, and our two boys, Conrad
and Arlo. Together, they have made this project (and everything else)
possible. The book itself I have dedicated to our daughters, Ingrid and
Sappho, who arrived in the spring of 2016 and have inspired nothing
but good feelings ever since.
ix