In Tropicopolitans Srinivas Aravamudan reconstructs the colonial mind's eye of the eighteenth century. by way of exploring representations of peoples and cultures subjected to colonial discourse, he makes a case for the agency—or the ability to withstand domination—of these oppressed. Aravamudan’s research of texts that followed eu advertisement and imperial growth from the wonderful Revolution during the French Revolution unearths the advance of anticolonial attention sooner than the 19th century.
“Tropicalization” is the principal metaphor of this research, a time period that comes with either the development of assorted dynamic tropes wherein the colonized are seen and the positioning of the research, basically the tropics. Tropicopolitans, then, are these those that undergo and face up to the representations of colonialist discourse. In readings that reveal new relationships among literary illustration and colonialism within the eighteenth century, Aravamudan considers such texts as Behn’s Oroonoko, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Captain Singleton, Addison’s Cato, and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and The Drapier’s Letters. He extends his argument to incorporate analyses of Johnson’s Rasselas, Beckford’s Vathek, Montagu’s shuttle letters, Equiano’s autobiography, Burke’s political and aesthetic writings, and Abbé de Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes. providing a thorough method of literary background, this research presents new mechanisms for knowing the advance of anticolonial agency.
Introducing eighteenth-century experiences to a postcolonial hermeneutics, Tropicopolitans will curiosity students engaged in postcolonial stories, eighteenth-century literature, and literary theory.