OVERVIEW
These three fields reflect my
interest in undertaking an extended exploration
of the cultural relations between India and Ireland
in the nineteenth century. The central theoretical
framework, which my major field addresses, is the
question of nature of the shared experience of two
sites in the British Empire that have been identified
as having been colonised. In order to investigate
this question I have constructed an oral exam, starting
with the major field, that examines a broad historical
and geographic context.
My first minor field, on the question of William
Butler Yeats' poetry and the Irish independence
movements, speaks to a specific observation: It
is almost impossible to study Irish-Indian cultural
relations without investigating the fascination
of many of the figures of the Irish literary revival
with a peculiarly European brand of what was thought
of as Eastern mysticism. This fascination broadened
into a whole range of cultural and political cross-fertilisations
that often coalesced around the independence movements
in both countries. It is in this vein that I wish
to look closely at the question of Yeats' poetry
and the Irish independence movement.
The second minor field, the contemporary Indian
novel, draws the implications of my major field
forward to the present, looking at the phenomenon
of the transnational construction of the postcolonial
nation. If my first two fields are concerned with
colonisation and decolonisation, this field interrogates
postcolonial literary production.
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