Dissertation Proposal
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EXILE AND EMPIRE: POST-IMPERIAL NARRATIVE AND THE NATIONAL EPIC: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RUSHDIE’S THE SATANIC VERSES & VIRGIL’S AENEID By KENNETH SAMMOND A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Comparative Literature Written under the direction of Steven F. Walker And approved by ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ ________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey January, 2011 ©2011 Kenneth Sammond ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Exile and Empire: Post-Imperial Narrative and the National Epic: A Comparative Study of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Virgil’s Aeneid By KENNETH SAMMOND Dissertation Director: Professor Steven F. Walker This dissertation juxtaposes Virgil’s Aeneid with Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in order to explore how epics, which question and upend our very ideas of civilization, represent a crisis in culture and anticipate new ways of imagining community. This juxtaposition, developed from allusions to Virgil found in The Satanic Verses, examines how Virgil’s epic imagines empire and how Rushdie’s work, as a type of epic, creates a narrative that I term, ‘post-imperial.’ Post-imperial narrative is defined as part of the evolution of the epic genre and its ways of imagining community. To create this definition, I represent a genealogy of epic traits both structural and thematic, arguing that epic themes express totalizing perspectives and changes that irrevocably alter the world. This genealogy reveals how epics imagine communities by creating self-definitional traits, historical and cosmological contexts, and anticipated futures. I argue that the Aeneid, an epic concerned with the founding of Rome, a new type of imagined community, provided a central basis upon which the British Empire imagined itself and based its imperial aspirations. The Aeneid is examined within three ii contexts: first, how it imagined and subverted the ‘national’ ideals of the nascent Roman Empire; second, how it was interpreted and used by the British Empire to justify aspirations of conquest and subjugation; and, finally, how it was rejected by post-colonial British writers for its role in imagining empire. As a post-imperial text, The Satanic Verses is situated and analyzed in relation to the ways that Virgil’s Aeneid was recognized as the national epic from which Western imperial ideals have been drawn. As such, I shed light on the epic, explore the ways the Roman and British Empires are understood, and introduce the post-imperial as a way in which texts have begun to supersede Western narratives of empire. Finally, this dissertation argues that the trope of the exile makes such epics possible, proposing that the ‘national’ community imagined in Virgil’s Aeneid requires a protagonist who is both foreign and native, but regarded by many natives as an outsider. It concludes that post-imperial texts also require a similar type of protagonist. iii Acknowledgments Over the years at Rutgers University, I have had the honor to work with many scholars, teachers and mentors in Comparative Literarature and Classics. Moreover, I have always had exemplary guides since I began studying literature in college: Carl Calendar of Brookdale College first introduced me to Comparative Literature; the late Serge Sobolevitch of Rutgers University deepened my appreciation of the links between history and literature; and the late Robert Fagles of Princeton University broadened my understanding of and love for epic. I would like to thank my committee, Janet Walker, Josephine Diamond, Alden Smith and Steven Walker, for their support, guidance and criticism. One of the first courses I took at Rutgers was with Janet Walker, who expanded my horizons to explore the relationships that could be discovered by comparing diverse texts, East and West. Alden Smith reinforced my love for teaching, continues to inspire as an educator, and he has energized my scholarly interests in all things Roman. Josephine Diamond kept me on track when I stumbled and encouraged me to explore post-colonialism more fully. My advisor, Steven Walker, was both gracious and critical. I am especially grateful for our intense lunchtime conversations about faith, doubt, and the ways that classical texts continue to influence the ways we imagine. I would like to thank the Graduate Directors, Josephine Diamond, Janet Walker, Elin Diamond and Alessandro Vettori, who supported my doctoral studies as I taught full-time and became the proud father of three children. iv I am grateful also to Martin Green, Marilyn Rye, Peter Benson and Geoff Weinman at Fairleigh Dickinson University; the former two for their insight and guidance, and the latter two for granting the leave that gave me the time to complete this dissertation. The love of my mother and father, Eleanor and Edward Sammond, has strengthened me from the beginning of my studies. My mother has inspired me with her prayers and faith; my father has guided with his striving, doubt, and perpetual questioning. In addition, I would like to thank my brothers, Edward, Robert and Brian, and my late sister, Jennifer, all of whom continually encouraged my work. My brother, Brian, was especially helpful in reading over and correcting my drafts. I would also like to thank my parents-in-law, Sajida and Mohammed Anwar Ali, for their guidance, assistance and acceptance. The most joyous and gracious thanks are offered to my wife, Samina, meri jan, and my children, Haniya, Humera and Tariq: forsan et haec olim meminisse iuuabit. It is to them that I dedicate this dissertation. They are the reason I journey forward, they remove all doubt. v Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE Bookends? Virgil, Rushdie and the tears in things 8 CHAPTER TWO The Problem of Epic – Definitions & Apprehensions 15 CHAPTER THREE Creating Community: Imagining Empire, Foundational Fictions 78 CHAPTER FOUR Reading the Aeneid, Reading Empire 159 CHAPTER FIVE Exiles and Empires: Aeneas & Chamcha 253 CHAPTER SIX Reading The Satanic Verses, Reading Empire? 285 CHAPTER SEVEN Coda: Derek Walcott’s Omeros and the post-imperial 333 Works Cited 340 Curriculum Vitae 354 vi 1 Introduction …when a new work of art is created…something…happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it.…the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities. T.S. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent This dissertation has its roots in two separate works that I have read and reread often over the years: the Aeneid and The Satanic Verses. The first work, by the Roman poet Virgil, is well known and has been much analyzed, parsed and categorized over the past two millennia. At the same time, in a nod to the possibilities exposed through post- modern theories of literary study, this text has proven resilient and resistant to fixed notions of meaning and technique. It is taught (most often) as a national epic.1 However, quantifying and qualifying this category has only served to extend and broaden the yield of the text –to state that it is a national epic is to begin discussing it, not to have reached a conclusion; in addition, the very limits imposed on it by this consideration serve only to reveal the biases and shortcomings of this approach: what is meant by epic? what is meant by national? However, such questions are not often plumbed in the courses where students are usually exposed to this work. The greater majority of students are introduced to the Aeneid not in the Classics department, but rather in a literature or English department. This work is most often taught as part of a survey course, such as Introduction to Literature, World Literature, 1 This is not to diminish the fact that it is taught as a literary or “secondary” epic that responds and reacts to Homer’s “primary” epics. However, once the discussion examines why the Aeneid was written, the national issue inevitably becomes part of the conversation or reading. The significance of the “national” epic will be discussed below in Chapter Four. 2 Introduction to Mythology, the Classical Tradition, Humanities, or a “Great Books” course. In fact, the greater majority of students of literature are only given a glimpse of this work in a perfunctory manner: it is one of those texts taught most often using a New Critical approach –the lecture or discussion focuses on what the Aeneid is about, as though we have figured it out. In the end, Virgil’s poem is regarded as one of those texts that one has to read, and little thought may go into why it should be read and what the text can yield. As a last resort, we read it because it is a “classic.” So what is a classic? Unfortunately, the Aeneid is a classic along the lines that Mark Twain detailed in a speech given in 1900 entitled, “Disappearance of Literature;” in this speech, Twain noted concisely that a classic is “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read” (194).2 T. S. Eliot, one of the most fervent and most staid of admirers of the Greco-Roman-British tradition, struck quite a different tone in his well- known address, “What is a Classic?” He defined the classic in far more sober terms which, in a way, were far-reaching in their implications. In this essay, Eliot focused on the notion of a “universal classic” (10)—which, for him, is Virgil’s Aeneid. He noted how this “universal classic” has a “peculiar kind of comprehensiveness…due to the 2 Twain’s address “Disappearance of Literature,” delivered at the Nineteenth Century Club at Sherry's in New York City on November 20, 1900, included well-known scholars in its audience.