TY - JOUR
AU - 
AB -  Gauri Viswanathan This paper is part of a larger inquiry into the construction of English literary education as a cultural ideal in British India. British parliamentary documents have provided compelling evidence for the central thesis of the investigation: that humanistic functions traditionally associated with the study of literature — for example, the shaping of character or the development of the esthetic sense or the disciplines of ethical thinking — are also essential to the process of sociopolitical control. My argument is that literary study gained enormous cultural strength through its development in a period of territorial expansion and conquest, and that the subsequent institutionalization of the discipline in England itself took on a shape and an ideological content developed in the colonial context. In what follows, I propose to outline the preliminary stages of the historical process by which literature was made serviceable to British political interests — a process, I may add, that is replete with numerous ironies, contradictions, and anomalies. I have titled my essay T h e Beginnings of English' rather than, say T h e Rise of English' or T h e Growth of English' to emphasize two things: first, my interest is in 
TI - The Beginnings of English Literary Study in British India
JF - Oxford Literary Review
DO - 10.3366/olr.1987.001
DA - 1987-01-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/edinburgh-university-press/the-beginnings-of-english-literary-study-in-british-india-LQBesseR7T
SP - 2
EP - 26
VL - 9
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -