Thumboo, E.  "Strands In The Labels - Innovation and Continuity in English Studies: A View from Singapore".  Innovation and Continuity in English Studies: A Critical Jubilee, IAUPE, Germany, 2001: 187-208

Strands In The Labels - Innovation and Continuity in English Studies: A View From Singapore

1

In relatively homogeneous, independent nations, what maintains Continuity, and drives Change - the key words defining the general theme of this volume - hinges on people, time and place, a sequence with its own prioritising logic. The first is intellectual source and creative agency; the second and third, primary locations. Time is least complicated when framing an approach: we decide how far back, or forward, to go; when to pause, or digress. Place is geography and promise, until people-shaped into environment, then nation, as they evolve a substantial, common identity. Major programmes are mounted to meet the needs of individual and society. Over time, these grow into a network of beliefs, values, aesthetics, likes and dislikes, a sense of the permissible, and so on, and policies of progress that convert them into structures, institutions and organisations. This network and its interlinked, defining parts, reflect the deep spirit and substance of the principles, moral codes, and the social, political, educational, artistic and other expectations, and practices. They are the manifest and latent content of a people, time and place. They are 'cultural universals'.1 They embody core ideas, which are the blueprint for action. Their mobilising power represents a first order activity. Mutually reinforcing, these universals constitute and support 'reality', which is that picture a person, his larger community, and ethnic group, have of themselves, their society, their nation.

These universals create an over arching, putative, national ideology and national identity. Moreover, people, time and place, in that order, define the unity-sequence of an independent nation, the sequence of satu bangsa, satu ugama, satu negara, established, and affirmed by their internal dynamics. Energies supporting unity and identity far outweigh factors causing division. Less disruptive, dissent is kept civil by a climate of manageable debate, a process of consensus to cope with disagreement and confrontation. In such a precinct, individuals, communities, and social classes, close ranks, in times of major crisis, especially when they contend with the outside 'other'. All these service and strengthen a singularity whose intellectual-moral-aesthetic agencies monitor external influence, and internal change, through second and third order institutions and activities. Permanent interests are permanent guardians. A pervasive, powerfully operative spirit, a robust identity-agenda, primes their sense of self as, say, English, French, Chinese or Japanese.

Cultural universals are found in every nation is patent enough. But not so the enormous variations in the actual elements making up their substance, their full environment.2 The sets of facts are dissimilar; they configure differently. Unless they are grasped, and taken seriously, the risk of partiality, of inaccuracy, from overview down to particular judgements, to explanations and annotations, undermines even the most enlightened of critics.3 That grasp is indispensable if we are to understand and evaluate another literature. That is one of the tasks of English Studies should seriously set for itself, with thought and forethought. When we cross into another literature, in another language, we get comparative, and therefore sensitive to difference. Even then, the tendency to appropriate, and to think the analytical understandings developed and honed by studying our language and literature, safely apply. But this linguistic check is not there when dealing with the new literatures in English, because they are in English. If familiarity does not breed contempt, it does something that is possible worse: it breeds the assumption that you have the 'know' and the 'how'. That kind of check is not always there when examining Nigerian, coloured South African, Indian or Filipino literatures in English. They are in English, after all; or so it seems. It is not fully the case that where the language goes the full criticism gallops along. In each the language is given a local habitation and a name. Memorable instances include Raja Rao's Kanthapura (1938) - containing a Foreword now much adopted as a manifesto for creative departures and arrivals - Amos Tutuola's Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) and Gabriel Okara's The Voice (1964).

These are reminders that no nation is alone.  Neighbouring people, in their time, their place, each have their unity, their interests. But they are in contact. The diffusion of culture meant the diffusion of the second and third order substance, of which respective examples are easily absorbed ideas and practices, and items of material culture. On the other hand, first order, architectonic occurrences are rare. The spread of Islam in the Middle East, then across North Africa and into Spain, that so fundamentally altered culture universals, starting from religion, is perhaps the best known. An example of the possible effect on an individual would be the great Mauryan emperor-conqueror Ashoka who renounced war after conversion to Buddhism.

Generally, differences between neighbouring nations were largely matters of degree, not kind. When any of the four horsemen rode, they shook foundations other than the broad ones of culture. In contrast, the contact generated by post-medieval colonialism was far more corrosive. Great distances were involves. They leapt over the familiar, and encountered cultures with universals quite different from theirs. Moreover, as colonialism bit deep, the unity-sequence of the colonised was reversed, an altogether drastic fracture. Time was the new dispensation; place mattered as a source of raw materials; people, having been subdued, were subordinate. Restoring this unity-sequence was the hope of nationalism, and the primary aim of newly independent states and nations.

The history of that contact in the colonies, from the time such studies were introduced as a colonial undertaking, to the changes consequent upon national independence, as peoples responded to contextualising local political, educational, literary and other forces, have not received the attention they need, let alone the attention they deserve.

And that is not all. Firstly, while the non-Anglo-Saxon parts of the British Empire, from Aden to Zanzibar, with India, the East and West Indies, Ghana, Nigeria and others in between, shared the tensions and the depredations of colonialism, their different histories, and the unique content, packaging and emphases of their cultural universals, made each of their experience, in situ, unique. Colonial fundamentals remained consistent as they evolved. But their prosecution took forms tailored to best exploit each dominion, colony, protectorate and dependency, according to its cultural universals, natural resources, and strategic location, all in the metropolitan interest. Secondly, there was, and is, in the ex-colonies - some a considerable distance from their colonial past - an overarching, essentialising vision, generated by the desire to be free, to be politically, economically, psychologically and culturally independent. It is these, and their processes especially, that ask to be seen steadily, and seen whole, if we are to properly understand and judge each of the new literatures in English.

Studying these literatures involves dealing with difference, and therefore, two sides, comprising ex-colonial masters and ex-colonial subjects, who were, moreover,   connected, and exclusively, by a period of unequal history. While connections remain after independence, chiefly through a language, and similarities in certain institutions in law and education, and membership in organisations like the London-based Commonwealth of Nations, difference counts increasingly as national cultural universals revive and strengthen.

A fruitful approach is to note how English spread. It took two basic, but radically contrasting forms, settlement (migration) and colonisation. While the full context of cause and effect for each of them draws in issues ranging from freedom of religious worship, to strategic advantage over other rival European powers, the concern here is English Studies. Apart from a common debt to English Literature in their early life, the literatures in English that each gave rise to, have contrasting origins and settings. The former was marked by the combination of people and language. Relatively full cultural universals were thus transplanted. The latter by officials and language. Comparatively limited, and selective, cultural universals took root.

Settlements were direct inheritors of all things English, including one of the world's greatest literatures.  It had accumulated since Geoffrey Chaucer, starting with his The Boke of the Duchesse and the better-known The Canterbury Tale. It includes William Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Interestingly enough, Samuel Daniel, one of them, had this to say in 'Musophilus'(1599):

And who in time knows whither we may ven
The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores
This gaine of our best glorie shal be sent,
T'inrich vnknowing Nations with our stores?
What worlds in th'yet vuformed Occident
May come refin'd with th'accents that are ours?
Or who can tell for what great worke in hand
The greatness of our style is now ordain'd?
What powres it shall bring in, what spirits comand,
What thoughts let out, what humours keep restrain
What mischiefe it may powerfully withstand,
And what faire ends may thereby be attain'd.4

When the Pilgrim Fathers landed in America in 1620 they carried English cultural universals, Daniel's 'our stores'. It was the first long-distance English literary expansion. It was the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora that took the English cultural universals, to America - 'great in English wealth, English thought, and Englishmen'5, at least up to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Then came Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Sub-sets of them formed as these settlements acquired their own character, tradition and authority, the American to such an extent that its contemporary cultural universals, and spin offs, are the most influential. But major continuities and links remain, held in place by a broadly shared inheritance, linked by powerful sentiments, language, and strategic interests, the most recent instance of which is the common position America and Britain took on Iraq and Yugoslavia.6

Similar sentiments and links do not mark British colonisation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its aftermath. Nor do we expect any because that took officials and language to the colonies, not people who intended to settle7 Compared to settlements, the numbers were small. Consequently, except for those dealing with rule and power, British cultural universals were not transplanted, at least not vigorously enough to dominate across the board, or to survive in toto after colonialism. They formed a thin, but strictly enforced upper crust, centred in the Club, the maidan, the barrack room, images of which are in Rudyard Kipling's Kim, and E M Forster's A Passage To India. Unlike the French who assimilated talented colonial subjects - Leopold Sedar Senghor comes to mind - the British did not create a colonial elite after their own image.8

Settlement literatures differ fundamentally in origin, affiliation, substance, and character, from the new literatures in English. The former had substantial continuity with England. In contrast, the new literatures, being ex-colonial, and in English, had a measure of initial continuity with Britain, but one soon modified by radical differences in assumptions, role and operative paradigms.

Continuity and Change in English literature was evolutionary; settlement literature more rapid and varied through acts of growing self-definition, as Americans for instance. The Revolution of 1778 did not seriously alter her cultural intimacy with Britain for at least a hundred years. In terms of lines of descent and growth, that for the new literatures was tempestuous, and far more complex in terms of contexts and circumstances. The writers inhabited two cultures. Although the first generation were -with few exceptions - students of English literature, they had deep roots in their own cultural universals, as Tamils, Ijaw, Gikuyu, Cantonese, Samoans, South Africans - Coloureds, Africans and English-speaking whites - Malays, Maoris, Filipinos, the occasional Thai, and so on. Moreover, many wrote of, and out of interruptions of life before, during, and immediately after colonialism; and of the freedom that promised national resurgence. We are talking about quite different writing contexts, each with unique factors of production. The 'other' has an expressive face. Consequently, the processes enabling talk of continuity and change, can neither reflect the radical experiences, nor characterise the range of environments producing new literatures. Nor are they meant to. Those environments - built around people, time and place - have had their Continuity disrupted to such an extent that Change, following independence, is more revolutionary than evolutionary. The two crucial events - separated by anything from fifty to three hundred years - are the arrival/insertion and the departure/expulsion of colonialism. The first was often violent; in any case disruptive; the second generally less so, with exceptions such as the Mau Mau national reassertion, and other instances of conflict, such as the communist uprising in Malaya, which was not always fully linked to colonialism. As inter-related processes, Continuity and Change in homogenous, independent nations, are less dramatic; and if dramatic like the Puritan or French Revolutions, less sustained. Those who oppose each other, however bitterly, are still largely subject to the same national cultural universals. In contrast, when colonialism is imposed on a country/nation, or when colonies are created by cutting across pre-existing boundaries that have kept peace and ensured stability, as in the Cameroons9, or there is a significant imported population, as in Fiji, conflicts are more extensive, and sustained. The dangers of politics and economics turning bitterly racial are there.

But this is to anticipate.

2

Various colonial systems developed.10 Developed by the British, indirect rule was perhaps the most efficient. Based on maintaining control through indigenous institutions and structures, it saved on manpower, and left the colonised leadership the trappings of authority. As masters, they arranged or re-arranged economics, and matters in other key areas, but left culture by and large alone. The Treaty of Pangkor (an island south of Penang, and just off the coast of Perak, West Malaysia), 1874, formalised indirect rule. Useful native institutions were kept. And it made sense to apply lessons learnt in one part of empire to another.11

Whatever their pre-colonial status, the colonised lost control of their destiny when their military power collapsed. 'People' is replaced by 'Colonialist', re-inscribing the sequence as 'Colonialist, Place, Time', then 'People'. The old sequence no longer exercises any prioritising power. 'People centred' becomes 'Colonial centred'. Other changes follow. In the imperial/colonial design, place is decisive, especially as competition among European powers escalates. Transport by sea relied on stations to protect trade, communications and other strategic interests.12 The landmasses they controlled translated into wealth. Repatriated to London, it contributed directly, and massively, to Britain's pre-eminence in the hierarchy of nations. They guaranteed raw materials for manufactures, diamonds and other precious stones, platinum, gold, silver and other metals. Colonies had to be profitable; otherwise why have them? It helped considerably if they were also were markets for British manufactures. In a cycle of primary (coloniser) and secondary (colonised) prosperity, 'Time' was marked by the continuous competition among the British, French and Dutch, and, later, the Germans and Italians. Colonised people became second-class citizens, marginalized. They and their leaders had to adjust to the new dispensation that reduced the circumscribing power and operational radius of their cultural universals, by confining it to what was a parallel, but contained society, function on reduced terms.

Only when they became independence in the late 40s and early 50s did the former colonies set about restoring the proper sequence of People, Time and Place.13  People again provided the primary focus. Time was one of continuing national reconstruction and construction, within an international order dominated by America, Britain and France, the victorious Allies. Place had to adapt its colonial infrastructure to a national, regional, global one. There was a cline rising from under-developed, to developing, to developed; the 'Third', 'Second' and 'First' Worlds. Recovery, restoration and development were the key words around which programmes got built. National pride and national identity - sought especially to bridge ethnicities - was the dominant themes. The curious thing about identity is that you do not talk about it, in fact dismiss it, when it has been absorbed into the national psyche, turned into a condition reflex. It is a vital force in the growth of a nation. Shakespeare knew this full well when he wrote the history plays. Identity is not a flat word. It is a complex site. Its DNA, especially if it encodes a colonial history, is a permanent source of attitude, bonding, thinking and behaviour. Whether in capitals or the lower case, it often protects its inhabitants from changes that work against their permanent interests, as when colonies become independent, and start construct and pursue their own agendas of recovery and national re-assertion, of which the new literatures in English are part. They encode the national recovery from a comprehensive colonialism of considerable duration.

The need for critical preparation, and caution, and re-thinking, is extensive - and obvious - if we are to possess the back-, middle- and foreground of these literatures. We could start by unpacking labels, including new 'literatures in English', which is but one in a series that includes 'Commonwealth Literature', 'Contact Literature' and 'Post-colonial Literature'. The challenge is not so much to take the politics, as to see and reflect it sides. Labels should give an immediate sense of what they purport to    identify. Hence 'E-literatures', 'E' for English, the present writer's label.14  Accuracy apart, Indian E-literature, Nigerian E-literature, Filipino E-literature and Singapore E-literature would call up specificities. Those who know these literatures will have their writers and critics immediately to mind. Those who do not will at least realise the limits of generalities. And the label could easily put the E-literatures in the company of the other national literatures, which are important to each nation, and which are themselves in danger of being overlooked by those chiefly concerned with the life conducted in English. In Malaysia and the Philippines, for instance, the literature in Bahasa and Filipino respectively, are far more national in reach than their E-literatures.  E-literatures need to live with them, and their other literatures, perhaps as much, if not more, than with each other.   

3

A useful way look at Continuity and Change is to move from abstraction to policy, from policy to plans, from plans to substance and facts. But life is rarely, it ever, so neat as to allow that. And the topic sits differently in each national context.  And in the larger of these, especially America, English Studies is subject to wide variations The main concern here is with the last fifty years or so, seen from an individual point of view formed by life and contacts in Singapore. Both its ethnic profile and concerted response to the challenges of transformation from colony to a modern, thriving island republic, rehearse most of the key issues implicit in the topic.  Singapore has four official languages - Bahasa, Chinese, Tamil and English - to meet the needs of the Malays, Chinese, Indians, and the Eurasians who use English.

English has a pivotal place. Apart from bridging the ethnic groups, it is used in administration, education, the press and other mass media, high tech. manufacture, regional and international contact and so on. The great majority of Singapore's best young scholars are sent to Berkely, Cambridge, Harvard, MIT, London, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford and comparable institutions; a few to Beijing, Madras, Tokyo and leading universities in Germany and France.

Given this multi-ethnic profile, Singapore's cultural universals have deep and varied roots, as well as powerful modernising elements. It is enough to show that the 'other' is a label of closure that excludes the rich, complicated and thriving worlds of the E-literatures. The matrix for each universal contains head, sub-heads, sub-sub-heads, down to minutiae which, given the nature of things, often reflect powerful considerations. When the colours of a Singapore regiment are commissioned - an attractive colonial inheritance - the following share the act of blessing: Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Hindu, Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist, Sikh, Baha'i priests, and Rabbi. This is only one E-literature.  Understanding what goes into all the E-literatures and their worlds, in all their complexity, is crucial if we intend to explicate and judge, and want to see how, on the one hand, they belongs to the family of literatures in English, and, on the other, to the national families, which, together, have hundreds of languages. They include some with powerful oral traditions, others with classic texts, like the Rig-Veda and I-Ching, which go back two to three thousand years.

English was the language of administration. Language shapes sensibilities; it colonises minds. When Queen Isabella of Spain - the tough lady to whom Christopher Columbus supplicated for ships - was presented in 1492 with a copy of Antonio de Nebrija's Gramatica, she wanted to know its purpose. The Bishop of Avila's reply is instructive, core: 'Your Majesty, language is the perfect instrument of empire.'15 We might add it remains a potent instrument, well after empire: Spanish, Portuguese, French, with English leading the pack by a long shot. All international languages, they each manage neo-colonial possibilities in proportion to their current influence.

In Singapore as it did elsewhere, English followed the Empire. Schools were started to educate the Malays, and the Chinese and Indians, chiefly the children of immigrants, to produce a local source of manpower. There were two more groups, the Eurasians and the Perenakans. The Eurasians used English even if they spoke Portuguese or some other European language. Their surnames suggest a fascinating history.16 The Perenakans were Chinese, mainly from Fukien, who had settled in Malacca and inter-married with the Malays, adopting elements of Malay culture including language, but retaining their traditional religion and unique identity across many generations.17 To say that the colonial 'other' is complicated, runs the risk of under-statement.

A solid grounding in English that included studying literature, produced the teachers and clerks. Students took the Senior Cambridge Certificate and the London Matriculation, both qualifications for admission to university. In time came colleges, then universities that invariably had English Departments. In Singapore, Raffles College (1929) offered a Diploma, requiring two subjects selected from Economics, Education, English, Geography, History and Mathematics for Arts, and Chemistry, Education, Mathematics and Physics for Science. A select few were allowed to specialise in a single subject in the Final Year.

The history of English Studies in Britain is well known. Parts of it, especially the debate and manoeuvres to establish it in Oxford and in Cambridge, make fascinating reading.18 Below is the initial Oxford English syllabus approved in 1894:

1. Old English Texts (Beowulf and Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader).
2. Middle English Texts (King Horn, Havelok, Laurence Minot, Sir Gawayne).
3. Chaucer (selections) and Piers Plowman (selections).
4. Shakespeare (about six plays).
5. History of the English Language.
6. History of English Literature to 1800.
7. Gothic (Gospel of St. Mark) and unseen translations from Old and Middle English.
8. Critical Paper
9. and
10. Special Subjects.19

The Raffles College English syllabus for the academic year 1928-1929 was:

Year  1	a. The history of English Literature from 1780 to the present day; b. English Language (Composition and Prose Style), with instruction in précis writing.
Year  2	a. The Elizabethan era with some reference to the beginnings of literature in England; b. English Language with particular attention to the development of Meter.
Year  3	a. Milton, and extending to the close of the 18th Century; b. English Language including a series dealing with the principles of criticism.

This syllabus, introduced thirty-five years after that first proposed for Oxford, is comparatively impoverished. Himself an Oxford man, E W Gillett, the first Professor, must have been familiar with the scene in Britain at the time. To be fair, he was the only member of staff before Graham Hough joined him in 1931.

Ronald Bottrall's arrival in 1934 led to a considerable strengthening of the whole syllabus. He was one of the group gathered around F R Leavis who had singled him out, with William Empson, as promising poets.20 The changes he made were far-reaching, though not all survived his departure three years later. Bottrall moved language work to Michaelmas of the First Year. Hilary and Trinity, were taken up with an outline of literature from Chaucer to 'the present', anchored by 'A plan of reading based on set books of which detailed knowledge of certain specified books will be required'. The Second and Third Years were devoted to 'Chaucer to the year 1750' and '1750 to the present day'.21 A major development was the detailed analysis of prose and poetry in class, including unseen passages. Inspired by I A Richards, Leavis himself, and Empson whose Seven Types of Ambiguity had appeared in 1930, these Prac. Crit. sessions were invaluable. They took the student into the workings of language at a level of imaginative reach and power to be found in one of the world's great literatures.  It equipped the student with the tools of close reading, very much a Leavis prescription.22 The foundation for that kind of work was a strong command of English. The schools were to provide it.

Entering British CUs through its literature had its benefits. You understood the coloniser better, which some thought was of dubious value. Close reading made the text yield more, and sharpened ones language, refined ones sensibility. There are lessons in Mark Antony's 'Friends, Romans, countrymen…', especially in how carefully calculated verbal management of language as gesture, and gesture as language, most potent when coming together, turns the mob against Brutus and his fellow conspirators. Think of the soliloquies of Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello; of poems from William Dunbar to W B Yeats. Passages and poems we have explicated; read and/or recited with that fullness of attention that combines the giving of mind and feeling and a simultaneous sense of detachment. Here are lines from the third section of 'The Tower'

I mock Plotinus' thought
And cry in Plato's teeth,
Death and life were not
Till man made up the whole
Made lock, stock and barrel
Out of his bitter soul,
Aye, sun and moon and star, all,
And further add to that
That, being dead, we rise,
Dream and so create
Translunar Paradise.23

Consider the rhythm. It supports every curve and loop of the thought. A set of strong verbs frame the dialectical movement of Yeats' push for release from bare intellect into the poised perfection of paradise. The choice of nouns is equally careful. Apart from their importance to Yeat's system enunciated in A Vision, and his general thought, Plato and Plotinus sum up the two main strands of ancient Mediterranean philosophy. It is part of the poetry's careful organisation that the celestial nouns bespeak of light, life and immensity. The regular beat of the lines, takes meaning on a powerful march. The preponderance of monosyllabic words, the unhesitating, repetitive use of 'and', the confident alternation of stress, gives each line, literally, the stamp of authority that in turn strengthens Yeats' argument. Perhaps the boldest part of an already bold undertaking is how he shifts the flow. By bracketing 'sun and moon and star with 'Aye' and 'all' he lifts them above the poem's flow to stress their importance. They are the only physical sources of light in the universe. The other instance of a double 'that': '…further add to that/That being dead…'. All this creates a rhythmic authority that charges each word in a cliché like 'lock, stock and barrel' with unexpected life.

Discussions focussed on 'core courses', often associated with the 'great tradition', the 'canon', concentrate only on half the question. And that half concerns texts, picked to provide entry into the essential spirit and content of the cumulative literary tradition. The other half, comprising analytical and conceptual skills, was generally assumed because students did Prac. Crit. every week. The serious business of studying - on any given level - a text in the fullest extent possible required the development of approaches and various instruments. From the time teaching resumed after the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945) when Graham Hough returned from internment leave to 1969 when D J Enright left, courses were built around major figures such as Chaucer, Shakespeare (two full courses at times), Spenser, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Yeats and Eliot. Course listings over the period included Shakespeare and his Contemporaries, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, The Metaphysical Poets, The Augustans, The Eighteenth Century Novel, The Romantics, The Victorians and so on. For a number of years Anglo-Saxon was offered. The First Year compulsory course on language was kept. English Language as a full major lay in the future despite graduates having to teach it in schools.

We studied English Literature, achieving a fair degree of inwardness with it. What was missing, and in an especially serious sense, was that essential and extensive sharing of the content, shape and spirit of cultural universals; the societal experience out of which the literature grew. Helpful and comprehensive as they were, the Introduction and extensive notes of the Arden Shakespeare, took the student that far, and no further.

            Now is the winter of our discontent
            Made glorious summer by this son of York;
            And all the clouds that lowered upon our house
            In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. 24

Unless the instruction is available in their cultural universals, not all will see that the play on 'son', made possible by the 'sun' of 'glorious summer', gains deeper reach through the theory of, and belief in, correspondences. The mind understands; the imagination sets to work; feelings stir. Many will spot that clever use of vowels in line three to suggest a dark, sky-wide oppressiveness.  But the crucial link that makes winter shiver, and summer vowelly stretched into glory, is the actual experience of the four seasons. That the tropics do not offer. Moreover, direct experience apart, the   images and metaphors of the literatures in English differ in their meaning-making, their meaning-potential. Herein lies the central challenge: the re-orientation of English, what Braj Kachru calls it 'nativisation'25 The object, experience, and idea, and the calculus of meaning and implication, the connotative layering described by literature and environment, between that literature, however rich and memorable, was not on all fours with the cultural universals of the colonised.

Colonialism changed the equations of contact. There were the colonisers and the colonised. A substantial part of the coloniser's universals - administrative practice, language, law, religion, custom, social structure, economics, education etc - arrive. Where there had been one set of universals, now there were two. Some were imposed; some introduced as alternatives the colonised accepted, ignored or took to partially.  The centres of power, especially related to the branches of government shift from local to colonial hands. The contact invariably to led to irrevocable change, some deep, fundamental. The beginnings of multiplicity, you might say. There were two sets of cultural universals, the second the indigenous and immigrant-imported ones: Malay, Chinese and Indian.

4

 Nationalism and independence sought to restored the unity-sequence of people, time and place, and repair and modify cultural universals. To have been colonised before or when the industrial revolution was not yet in full swing, and to be released in the mid-twentieth century of jet aircraft and nuclear power stations, made national renovation imperative. The idea of a national identity is vital necessity during key formative periods of a peoples' history, e.g. when they are yet to be a people, when there is yet to be sufficient binding for them to be justifiably seen as a nation rather than a country. It is pursued at all levels, on all occasions. Not to recognise that this identity is a condition, a commodity, an instrument, a major pervasive theme, is to miss an essential force in the formation of literature and the other key institutions that define and sustain society and nation. Broad-based, it is often passionate, a potent source of political cultural, social and economic will and doing. It is idea, ambition and substance.

At the time when Singapore became independent in 1965 students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Science majored in either one or two subjects, graduating with a Class based on performance. The final examination for the one subject course had eight three-hour papers based on two years' work. These were

(i)                Practical Criticism, and Readings in Criticism
(ii)              Chaucer
(iii)             Shakespeare
(iv)             Spenser, Milton and Pope
(v)               Literature 1578-1700 (excluding Spenser and Milton)
(vi)             Literature 1700-1798 (excluding Pope)
(vii)            Literature 1798-1880
(viii)          Literature 1880 to the Present

Based on the major texts of the Great Tradition, the courses were demanding. Training in close reading, based on a representative selection of poetry, fiction and drama, was central. The question was whether, in their existing form, such studies, vigorous though they were, were ultimately appropriate, given the time and the place. More than any other subject, English Studies per se, took students into cultural universals of the literature, which, in some instances, exerted a powerful influence, taking them away from their immediate environment. That generally happened when a student was absorbed both into the literature, the criticism, and that larger culture. If their own cultural universals were insufficiently empowered, then sensibilities, values, assumptions, attitudes, ways of thinking, and expectations were changed markedly.

It was inevitable for disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to confront the fundamental question of their post-colonial relevance. Apart from the basic concepts, theories, hypotheses and principles - themselves in need of inspection - there is the question of content. For instance, history in the mid-50s meant, chiefly, 'European Expansion Overseas', starting with the Portuguese, and progressing through English, Dutch, French, and brought up by the American occupation of the Philippines. Labour economics started to look at local problems. Geography was getting tropicalised. English Studies kept a steady course.

But the times had started changing. Nationalism was in the air, gathering strength and direction, first among student intellectuals studying in London, then at the University of Malaya (located in Singapore at the time) that had been formed in 1948. The editors and associates of Fajar, published by the University Socialist Club, were arrested in May 1954, during the Final Examinations, and tried for sedition in August. They were acquitted: perhaps the intention had been to scare. Nor were they the first arrested.  The serious desire in the late 40s and early 50s to create a Malayan literature in English, one reflecting the cultural matrix of Malaya and Singapore, it was part of that nationalism.

The recognition of the need for that literature was beginning to spread. This is from an editorial in a magazine edited by, and for, secondary schools in Singapore.

"YOUTH" therefore appeals to you, the young men and women of this country, to help STIMUALTE INTEREST IN THE CREATION OF A GENUINELY ORGINIAL MALAYAN LITERATURE.  This is especially urgent in view of the efforts being made towards the creation of a MALAYAN NATION.  Or, are we to be a nation without our own literature?26

Malayan literature in English started at the University. Goh Sin Tub, Wang Gung-wu, Lim Thean Soo, James Puthucheary and Beda Lim were the pioneers. Ee Tiang Hong went up to read English, in 1951; the present writer in 1953; Lloyd Fernando in 1954; Wong Phui Nam in 1956. While the language was English, and the sources of technical instruction its literature, the sentiments, the imagery, the metaphors were increasingly ours. A few of us knew the works of  Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand, R K Narayan, the modern founders of Indian E-literature, Amos Tutuola and Wilson Harris. This was entirely 'unofficial' reading. The enterprising, forward-looking, proprietor of Orient Star News, a leading bookshop in the 50s, brought in their novels. English literature was gradually broadening into literatures in English. What struck the reader immediately was the environment of the fiction, and how Rao and Tutuola especially, was the way they used English. This awareness led to interest in the literatures of the CUs defining Singapore's multiracial inheritance. Apart from reading translations, some of the poets themselves worked with Indian and Chinese friends on translations; Dollah Majid on a collection of Malay poems that included sharply nationalistic ones.

The interest in writing our literature - the division between Singapore and Malaysia was only formalised in 1965 - into existence, did not directly affect the syllabus. What it did though, was create an increasingly energetic awareness that other literatures in English, was already in existence, and growing. A thesis on African poetry in English that examined the relationship between intention and idiom in Lenrie Peters, Kofi Awonoor, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, Wole Soyinka, and Denis Brutus was completed in 1969. In the same year, a course in Commonwealth Literature comprising a selection of African and Australian texts was offered for the first time. Other doctoral theses were 'An Authentic Idiom: A Study of Australian Literature'(1976), 'Vain Empires: the response of some British writers to the East'(19768), and 'Identity in contemporary literatures in English from the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore' (1986). Successful masters included

The role of the English Department was systematically reconsidered in 1970. Like all other sectors of the educational system, it served subject and national needs. That was not incompatible. Singapore's survival and, later, her progress, included training and educating its young to the highest level they were capable of attaining. A small population made this an imperative, especially as we moved into high-tech industries, finance and sought maximum efficiency in service and other sectors of the economy. The more sophisticated the infrastructure, the greater the chances of success, the higher the demand for trained minds. Characteristically, graduates were required in both the public and private sectors as administrators, teachers, editors, journalists, TV and radio producers, advertising copywriters, public relations executives, and personnel officers. A small number went into banking. The Department had to ensure that graduates were both well grounded in the subject and able to bring the premium of their language skills to whatever work they chose. That work was not only varied. At this level, whatever the profession or vocation, it opened into a society very much on the move. It was not a matter of ripening, of maturity. Development, consolidation and growth, were far more basic 40 years ago. When it became independent in 1965, Singapore had no armed forces to speak of. It now has F-16s. The point made earlier about the different circumstances in which changes in society are evolutionary or revolutionary, certainly applies, given the aggregate of rapid changes in a relative period of time, and, moreover, compacted in an island-republic of about 250 square miles.  Professionalism functioned in a larger constructive context that sought independence and viability in a number of key areas vital to national interests.

 Given time and place, English Studies had to expand, re-orientate and place itself strategically. While maintaining a strong, sufficient interest in the historically mainstream English literature, the E-literatures needed to be brought in. That combined a diachronic inheritance, and a synchronic, contemporary challenge and opportunity, it could be said. Based on a broadly common set of themes, E-literatures were especially close in spirit and thrust to the local, national, and regional experience. These themes arose from the continuities and ruptures of pre- and post-colonial life. E-literatures were closer to home. Their wrestle to indigenise English by inserting new rhythms, playing with its syntax, adding images and metaphors and so on, was and is instructive.

But there had to be balance secured by combining compulsory and elective courses, in a specialist, 4^th year Honours degree good enough to give entry to leading universities in America and Britain for post-graduate work. This meant strong programmes covering the literature from Shakespeare down to what was virtually contemporary. In 1971 'Special Topics' was introduced. Students had a chance to do more detailed, demanding work, often in an area where staff had special teaching and research strengths. Two courses, 'Asian Literature in Translation' and 'Style and Stylistics', were also offered for the first time. The latter signalled the need for work in language. Significant numbers of graduates took up teaching each year. They had no formal training in language. For various reasons, the standard of English was declining in the schools to the extent that some students were had to take, and pass, Remedial English, in addition to their degree work. Poor language extracts a high cost in personal development, in social intercourse, in education, in administration and other areas where good language meant good work. Something had to be done. For the BA, students took two subjects, selected from Chinese Studies, Economics, English Literature, Geography, History, Malay Studies, Philosophy, Political Science, Social Work, Sociology, and Statistics, as majors, and a minor consisting of two courses offered by other departments.

In 1972 the Dept. was re-name English Language and Literature, signalling a major shift in focus. Staff were seriously concerned about the inroads a full-fledged language programme would make into the number of students - on which teaching posts depended - taking literature. Fortunately, intake of students into the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences rose gradually from about 300 in 1975 to 500. That and the introduction of Modern Drama, Modern American Literature, and Modern European Literature in translation, as Honours courses when the department was re-named, helped to allay fears. English Language became a full major in 1980, when the University of Singapore and Nanyang University (whose medium of instruction was  Chinese), were merged to form the National University of Singapore. By then literature and language staff saw the benefits of joint courses and joint research.

This fundamental broadening created the base for the necessary refinements reflecting developments in ES. It was a part of the wider movement within the Faculty that has led to the introduction of Chinese Language - for virtually the same reasons that led to the introduction of English Language - European Studies, Information and Communications Management, Japanese Studies, Psychology, South Asian Studies, Theatre Studies, and American Studies. Both the extent and the direction of ES is rapidly provided by courses listed in the Faculty handbook.

Language:	Level 1000 Analysing English, Studying English in Context;
	Level 2000 English sounds and Words, English Structure and Meaning;
	Level 3000 Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis, Language Development, Professional Writing: Theory and Practice, Literary Stylistics, Discourse Analysis, Special Topic, Writing Film Criticism, Oral Communication Skills for Professionals, Practical and Experimental Phonetics, Language Planning and Policy, Phonetic and Phonological Analysis, Syntactic Analysis, Language Development, Language and Society, Writing in the Electronic Era, Critical Reading-Persuasive Writing, Critical Discourse Analysis, Feminist Theory and Feminist Discourse;
	Level 4000 Phonological Theory, Syntactic Theory, Interactional Discourse, Functional Theories, English as a World Language, Lexicology and Lexicography, Computational Linguistics, Semantic and Pragmatic Theory, Language Education, Narrative Structures, History of English, Special Honours Topic.

Literature:	Level 1000 Foundations of Literary Studies I-The Novel, Foundations of         Literary Studies II - Drama and Poetry;
	Level 2000 Seventeenth Century, Topics in the Eighteenth Century, Film and Drama I, Post-Independent Literature: Malaysia and Singapore, Professional Writing, Writing Film Criticism, Introduction to Filmic Narratives, Topics in the Seventeenth Century, Eighteenth, American Literature I, History of Criticism, Teaching of Literature, Backgrounds to English Literature, Literature and Identity;
	Level 3000 Nineteenth Century, Topics in the Twentieth Century, American Literature II, Literature and the Other Arts, Creative Writing, European Literature, The Sociology of Literature, Film and Drama II, Modern Drama, Asian American Literature, Literature and Rhetoric, Gender and Literature, Feminist Theory and Feminine Discourse, Notions of  Postcoloniality;
	Level 4000 Honours Thesis (equivalent to two modules); American Literature III, Critical Theory, Topics in Film, The Literature of the Imaginary Journey, Topics in Cultural Studies, Recent Developments in Literary Thinking, Utopian Fiction, Research Methodology, Metafictions of the Novel, Discourses of the Early 20th Century Novel.

                

To compare the syllabi of 1930s, 60s and this, reveals the enormous developments that have transformed English Studies. The changes come from a number of sources. First there is the general the evolutionary, at times dramatic, growth of the subject. That expansion rested on fields opened up by feminist studies, E-literatures and other specialist areas. The interest in theory is perhaps the main revolution, one that not all approve when it takes us away from texts of fiction, drama and poetry, when it puts itself forward as the only proper study. But that is the extreme case. The influence of the mass media has led to the integration of film studies with considerable all round benefit.

In all this richness and variety, in the excitement of constantly permutating opportunities that now includes inter-net sites, the one permanent concern remains: the development of critical powers, discrimination, independence of judgement and the other benefits a solid literary education provides. That may be too conservative for some. The question is what are the alternatives. Only time will unfold what forces the new machinery hides.

'Innovation and Continuity': they are still among the major driving forces. And the subtleties are such that switching these key words can mean a wholly fresh undertaking. What has changed, and is changing, in response to time and place, is the relationship between them. In the form of tradition, continuity took longer to change before innovation gathered momentum. The unprecedented pace of invention contribute to, and therefore affect, every level of individual, family, community and national life. Today, a powerful consumerism based on goods, and style, fad and fashion as culture, working together with a mass media giving access to a vast network of information sites, are among the current locations of debate. They alter the way we live, the young especially. It is something that those seriously interested in literature - readers, educators, politicians, teachers, critics, and writers themselves - cannot afford to ignore. In an important sense, the substance of literature, the experience that makes it, is the collective substance and experience of both individual, and nation. There is no conclusion except to say that so long there is interest in words, for their own sake, as instruments, as beginnings, and as ends, English Studies will flourish, shaping and re-shaping itself for people time and place.