Savage Indignation: Colonial Discourse from Milton to SwiftSavage Indignation is about a flexible and indiscriminate discourse during the window of license occurring between the end of an English divine polity (1649) and the emergence of science as arbiter of true discourse (ca. 1734). Rather than tracing the development of the expedient language of empire and ideological success, the book analyzes the resistance and the waste that are integral to that spectacle of the bourgeois progress. Theoretically informed by Foucault and others, the readings of Milton's late poems, the Oroonoko texts, and Scriblerian efforts attend to denotative and connotative limits of the language, and they incorporate contemporary ephemera to expand the amplitude of potential signification. During the period, von Sneidern concludes, proprietary discourse and the language of trespass had not yet been converted into the language of duty. Just about anything could and was said, to the ingenious reader's wonder, merriment, and considerable uneasiness of mind. Maja-Lisa von Sneidern, Editorial Associate for Arizona Quarterly, teaches part-time at the University of Arizona South. |
Contents
| 26 | |
Freedom Pleasure and Waste | 53 |
Royal Slaves Unnatural Oppression and the Nature of Race | 85 |
Royal Slaves Of Blood and Bondage | 102 |
A Monster Colonialism and the Scriblerian Project | 140 |
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Abdelazer Adam American angels appears argues argument articulates asserts attempt authority become Behn birth blood body Book British called chapters character choice claim colonial concept concern condition construction course Critical cultural death designed desire discourse divine early economic eighteenth century emerges Empire England English essential figure freedom God's honor human identify ideology imagination individual John king labor language later less liberty London material matter means Milton monster narrative natural noble notes object offers original Oroonoko Oxford Paradise Lost person play pleasure poem political position possession practices problem produced qualities question race Raphael readers reading reason Restoration royal royal slave Samson Satan savage Second serve slave slavery social society Swift texts theory things tion turn twins University Press waste women World York
Popular passages
Page 19 - And what is Faith, Love, Virtue unassay'd Alone, without exterior help sustain'd? Let us not then suspect our happy State Left so imperfet by the Maker wise, As not secure to single or combin'd. Frail is our happiness, if this be so, And Eden were no Eden thus expos'd.
Page 36 - And should I at your harmless innocence Melt, as I do, yet public reason just, Honor and Empire with revenge enlarg'd, By conquering this new World compels me now To do what else though damn'dI should abhor.
Bibliographic information
| Title | Savage Indignation: Colonial Discourse from Milton to Swift |
| Author | Maja-Lisa Von Sneidern |
| Publisher | University of Delaware Press, 2005 |
| ISBN | 0874138825, 9780874138825 |
| Length | 204 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |