Philip Holden (email: ellhpj@nus.edu.sg)
Chitra Sankaran (email: ellcs@nus.edu.sg)
In this first lecture we'll be exploring writing in English in the discursive field of colonialism. We'll be looking at stories written by two British authors who spent time in Southeast Asia, Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham. We'll also be looking at short stories written and published in Singapore by Straits Chinese writers, and a single short story written by S. Rajaratnam. The stories have a complex relationship to each other, and often make use of similar tropes and other elements. At the same time there are obvious differences: Conrad and Maugham write as outsiders looking in, and have a European audience in mind. The Straits Chinese writers make use of similar tropes to Maugham and Conrad, but they are also concerned to write for an audience in Singapore, the other Straits Settlements (Malacca and Penang), and indeed in port cities throughout Southeast Asia. Rajaratnam is writing in the 1940s, during a period of rising Malayan nationalism, and this adds a further dimension to his text.
Some questions to think over: you can respond to one of them, if you wish, for your first IVLE posting.
1. What are the similarities between the Maugham story and the Straits Chinese stories? What are the differences?
2. Which elements of Conrad does Rajaratnam use? How does he transform them?
3. The stories are written under colonial rule, at a time before an independent Singapore was though possible. Does it make any sense to see all or some of them as "Singapore Literature"?
4. Maugham's stories were published two decades after those in the Straits Chinese magazine, but "The Book Bag" recycles elements common to earlier colonial writers. Do you think the stories from the Staits Chinese Magazine challenge colonial ideas or ideologies, or do they simply repeat or immitate them?
Last updated: 26 November, 2006