Strangers, Migrants, Exiles Widely, Though This Is Sometimes Not Apparent from the Very Outset
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
How do we see ourselves? How do we see each other? Questions of identity feature largely in our everyday lives: Advertisements try to sell us things to improve our lives because “they fit us”. A particular set of clothes is turned into a brand which a group Frauke Reitemeier (ed.) of people uses to identify who belongs to them and who does not. In literature, too, questions of belonging somewhere – to a group, to a people, to a nation – are discussed Strangers, Migrants, Exiles widely, though this is sometimes not apparent from the very outset. In this volume, four essays discuss questions of identity and gender, of identity and nationality in English, Negotiating Identity in Literature Irish and Canadian/Sri Lankan texts ranging from the early nineteenth to the twenty- first century. Göttinger Schriften zur Englischen Philologie Band 6 2012 Frauke Reitemeier Strangers, Migrants, Exiles Migrants, Strangers, Reitemeier Frauke ISBN: 978-3-86395-033-0 ISSN: 1868-3878 Universitätsdrucke Göttingen Universitätsdrucke Göttingen Frauke Reitemeier (ed.) Strangers, Migrants, Exiles This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License 3.0 “by-nd”, allowing you to download, distribute and print the document in a few copies for private or educational use, given that the document stays unchanged and the creator is mentioned. You are not allowed to sell copies of the free version. erschienen in der Reihe der Universitätsdrucke im Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2012 Frauke Reitemeier (ed.) Strangers, Migrants, Exiles Negotiating Identity in Literature Göttinger Schriften zur Englischen Philologie, Band 6 Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2012 Bibliographische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet über <http://dnb.ddb.de> abrufbar. Anschrift der Herausgeberin Frauke Reitemeier Seminar für Englische Philologie Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3 37073 Göttingen e-mail: [email protected] This work is protected by German Intellectual Property Right Law. It is also available as an Open Access version through the publisher’s homepage and the Online Catalogue of the State and University Library of Goettingen (http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de). Users of the free online version are invited to read, download and distribute it. Users may also print a small number for educational or private use. However they may not sell print versions of the online book. Satz und Layout: Frauke Reitemeier Umschlaggestaltung: Franziska Lorenz © 2012 Universitätsverlag Göttingen http://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de ISBN: 978-3-86395-033-0 ISSN: 1868-3878 Table of Contents Introduction (FRAUKE REITEMEIER)................................................................................ 7 Lord Byron’s Descendants (VANESSA MANGIONE).....................................................11 1. Introduction..............................................................................................................11 2. Lady Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon ............................................................................27 3. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre ...................................................................................50 4. Ellen Wood’s East Lynne.........................................................................................75 5. Conclusion ................................................................................................................95 Bibliography..................................................................................................................97 Indian Diamonds in Victorian Fiction (SABINA FAZLI).............................................103 Introduction................................................................................................................103 Contexts .................................................................................................................110 Real and Fictional Diamonds: Story and History .................................................118 Diamonds as Metaphor.............................................................................................136 Owning the Diamonds in England .........................................................................140 Invasion and Contamination....................................................................................157 Conclusion .................................................................................................................183 Works Cited ................................................................................................................185 The Construction of Identity in Northern Ireland (MELANIE SWIATLOCH)..........193 1. Introduction............................................................................................................193 2. Language Matters in Northern Ireland...............................................................195 3. Irish Identity and Stereotyping ............................................................................208 4. Conflict in Northern Ireland – The Land of Many Oranges and Greens....244 5. Conclusion and Outlook ......................................................................................270 6. Appendix.................................................................................................................272 Bibliography................................................................................................................275 Transnational Identities in Michael Ondaatje’s Fiction (SONJA LEHMANN) .........281 1. Introduction: Transnational Identities in Michael Ondaatje’s Fiction ..........281 6 2. Migration, Belonging and Identity ......................................................................283 3. Transnationalism....................................................................................................295 4. Transnational Identities ........................................................................................301 5. Transnational Identities in Ondaatje’s Fiction..................................................307 6. Conclusion ..............................................................................................................343 Bibliography ................................................................................................................345 „Göttinger Schriften zur Englischen Philologie“: Zum Konzept der Reihe (FRAUKE REITEMEIER) ................................................353 Frauke Reitemeier Introduction “Who am I?” For users of Unix operating systems, whoami is a command that gives the name that the user is working under. For psychologists and psychiatrists, it is the question that many patients ask themselves, trying to pin down the main ‘ingredients’ of their personality. In 2009, Richard David Precht published Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele? (Who am I – and If so, How Many?), subtitled “a philoso- phical journey”. Unlike many other self-help books Precht’s deals with the impor- tant questions in life: What is truth? Where do we come from? What is it that I am morally obliged to do, and why? As such, it is a short introduction to philosophy, and the question of who one is also belongs to this area. “Who am I?”, then, seems to be one of the key questions of humanity. In philosophy, sociology, and psychology, it asks for the definition of an iden- tity. According to the OED, ‘identity’ denotes a. The sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the condition of being a single individual; the fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else; individuality, personality. b. Who or what a person or thing is; a distinct impression of a single person or thing presented to or perceived by others; a set of characteristics or a de- scription that distinguishes a person or thing from others. (OED, s.v. ‘iden- tity’) 8 Frauke Reitemeier Identity, then, is seen as something that is largely immutable (“sameness […] at all times or in all circumstances”) and as unique (“that distinguishes a person […] from others”). The idea is that someone – or something, or even a group of someones – has features that sets him/her/them apart from everyone else, and that remain stable even if circumstances change. But just who “am” I, or who “are” we, and how do we find out? The perception of oneself differs from the way others see us, and the self- concept of an individual must be considered as different from the way s/he is seen from the outside. Many aspects come into play: an individual’s dreams and aspirations, his/her abilities and disabilities – real or perceived – , his/her interac- tion with others, his/her physical constitution, to name but a few. Sociologists have suggested that identity is created on two different levels, on an individual or personal and a social level. Essentially this describes the difference between refer- ring to oneself as ‘I’ as opposed to making statements about ‘us’, meaning ‘I and others like me’ and creating a group identity that is seen as distinct from the iden- tity of ‘them’. With respect to literature and literary analysis, questions of identity matter very much: Whenever we look for characteristics of this or that fictitious character we are interested in the way his/her identity is formed and formulated, part of which is apparent in the group or groups the character belongs to. Whenever we analyse the behaviour of a