From Prose to Policy: Leonard Woolf’s Literary Journey from Unconscious Imperialist to Conscientious Internationalist

Thumbnail Image
View / Download594.66 KB

Date

2016-02-19

Authors

Advisors

Goodwin, Craufurd D

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Repository Usage Stats

316
views
928
downloads

Abstract

*Designated as an exemplary master's project for 2015-16*

Leonard Woolf used writing, both fiction and non-fiction, to work through many of the issues of colonialism which he encountered both in his direct experience as part of the colonial administration of Ceylon and in his subsequent extensive research. This paper will show how, through this process, he went from being a “very innocent, unconscious imperialist” to what he would term an internationalist. It will trace his growth as a writer, looking in detail at the three short stories that make up the collection Stories of The East, and the novel The Village in the Jungle. Additionally, it will illustrate how he used his fiction to begin to articulate some of the issues that he would later write about in policy documents, in particular Economic Imperialism. Leonard’s observations and thoughts on imperialism went against the thinking of the establishment and some of his Bloomsbury contemporaries. It could be argued that they were ahead of their time. As such, this work will occasionally compare the writing of more contemporary writers on the subject, such as Edward Said, with those of Leonard’s to illustrate the level of analysis and perception Leonard brought to his work. Leonard himself did not see his work either as an author of fiction or as a political research and policy advocate as having had very much of an impact. However, his fiction while mainly ignored in the West, is still read and discussed widely in its subject country of Sri Lanka and the themes of his political research still resonate today.

Type

Master's thesis

Department

Graduate Liberal Studies

Description

Provenance

Subjects

Leonard, Woolf, Empire, Ceylon, The Village in the Jungle, Stories of The East

Citation

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/11613

Citation

Barlow, Richard L. (2016). From Prose to Policy: Leonard Woolf’s Literary Journey from Unconscious Imperialist to Conscientious Internationalist. Master's thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/11613.

Collections

Graduate Liberal Studies
Full item page

Dukes student scholarship is made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial / No derivative (CC-BY-NC-ND) license.