The partial postcoloniality of Julian Barnes's Arthur & George
Julian Barnes’s 2005 novel Arthur & George, unlike the rest of his oeuvre, has been read as a “subtly postcolonial narrative” (Boehmer, Indian Arrivals 198). His fictionalized historical portrait of the English-Indian lawyer George Edalji contributes to the postcolonial project of making emp...
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| Format: | Journal article |
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Indiana University Press
2018
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| Summary: | Julian Barnes’s 2005 novel Arthur & George, unlike the rest of his oeuvre, has been read as a “subtly postcolonial narrative” (Boehmer, Indian Arrivals 198). His fictionalized historical portrait of the English-Indian lawyer George Edalji contributes to the postcolonial project of making empire visible within Britain. Barnes’s postcolonialism, however, is only partial. The Edaljis are isolated in Barnes’s otherwise completely white Edwardian England. Furthermore, Barnes’s depiction of Arthur Conan Doyle risks perpetuating heroic accounts of this imperial figure and the nation he embodies. The partial postcoloniality of Arthur & George has wider implications for conceptions of Julian Barnes and of the contemporary English novel. |
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