Narayan, R. K. - Alpana Sharma Knippling (essay date Winter 1993)

Alpana Sharma Knippling (essay date Winter 1993)

SOURCE: "R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao and Modern English Discourse in Colonial India," in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 39, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 169-86.

[In the following essay, Knippling discusses Indian novels written in English and the implications of colonialism and nationalism on these novels, specifically focusing on Narayan's The English Teacher and Raja Rao's Kanthapura.]

Indigenous Indian novel-writing in English dates back to at least the mid-nineteenth century. Its "origin" owes as much to the educational reforms called for by both the 1813 Charter Act and the ensuing 1835 English Education Act of William Bentinck as to the circulation, representation, and purchase of English literature and culture among members of the Indian upper classes in nineteenth-century India. While we are not at liberty to assume that novel production in Britain and colonial India underwent simply...

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