Literature and Colonialism: Tracing the Haitian Theme in the Literary Works of Kleist, Seghers and Mueller

Literature and Colonialism: Tracing the Haitian Theme in the Literary Works of Kleist, Seghers and Mueller

Vungthianmuang, Mercy

The entire history of the "Entdeckungsreisen' in the 15th and the 16th Century is a history of the conquered and the conquerer. With historical evidences of the various European nations ruling over the 'other' nations, comes a corpus of texts which legitimates and hence establishes an outline of colonization in literary texts. This discourse on colonialism in the various disciplines of the social sciences especially in the literary texts helps us to analyze the links between power and authority and apparently which also manifests itself in the language of the text. The Haitian Revolution i.e. the Slave Revolt against the French Rule is a theme which has been discussed in various historical time -periods over the centuries. In German literature, this historical event has also been established in a series of works of Heinrich von Kleist: Die Verlobung in St. Domingo, Anna Seghers: Die karibische Geschichten and Heiner Mueller‘s Play: Der Auftrag. It is interesting to know how the three texts establishes an intertextuality not only in its form and structure, but also how in different dimensions of literary representations it attributes the various trends of colonial discourse. Orientalising the other, represent ing the ‗other‘ and the emergence of ‗stabilization through Power‘ can be observed in these literary works.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2011-05

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