Exploring Essential questions in British Literature
While looking at texts during and beyond the French revolution, some essential questions are raised. Two of which especially grab my attention.
- How can or should a society balance the interests of tradition and progress?
- How does Britain’s colonial and imperial history complicate the relationship between diction, language, authorship, and literary history?
By looking at Edmund Burke, Kamau Brathwaite, and Ngugi Wa Thiong-o one can have a conversation about how literature:
- Allows discussion of an argument for complete pursuit of progress versus honoring tradition.
- Housed discussions of how Britain’s colonization of the world drastically changed whole societies and cultures.
Edmund Burke on Tradition vs. Progress
A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper, and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.
(Burke 58)
Burke responds to the French revolution by claiming that a complete pursuit of innovation from a blank slate isn’t a smart way to approach change. Those who believe that it is aren’t thinking about the impact it has outside themselves.
So, he argues that those who are looking for the solution that best benefits future generations are those who seek guidance from the past.
The Answer:
In order for a whole society to stay alive, it must seek to have an even balance between tradition and progress.
Many were afraid that the French revolution was getting too out of hand and was heading toward progress too much. Burke reminds us that a healthy society should foster both tradition and progress equally.
Kamau Brathwaite and Ngugi Wa Thiong-o on British Colonization and Change
Places being colonized by Britain often faced a lot of erasure of native languages and cultures.
There is Amerindian, which is active in certain parts of Central America but not in the Caribbean because the Amerindians are a destroyed people, and their languages were practically destroyed.
(Brathwaite 1811)
Brathwaite gives the example of the Amerindian people having their culture and language die off in the Caribbean to show a result of English colonization taking over native languages.
English became the language of my formal education. In Kenya, English became more than a language: it was the language, and all the others had to bow before it in deference.
Thus one of the most humiliating experiences was to be caught speaking Gikuyu in the vicinity of the school. The culprit was given corporal punishment.
(Thiong’o 1721)
English was imposed in many places like Kenya into the basic systems like education to replace every native language with English (complete progress).
We have what we call creole English, which is a mixture of English and an adaptation that English took in the new environment of the Caribbean when it became mixed with the other imported languages.
(Brathwaite 1811)
Creole/Creolization emerged from this darkness of erasure to include the new with the old. The widespread speaking of English wasn’t going away, so people adapted.
The Answer:
Britain’s colonial history complicates the relationship between diction, language, and literary history by forcing adaptation.
Authors from all around the world write about how English colonization took a irreversible toll on their native cultures and languages. However, this change is inevitable so, it’s smart to adapt and include aspects of both the old native culture and the new colonial one.
Finally,
By looking at all these texts from two time periods, we can see that the theme of incorporating old with the new isn’t a unique concept. In order for modern societies to truly thrive in the modern world, there needs to be adaptation when inevitable integration happens.
Works Cited
Thiong’o, Ngugi Wa. “Decolonising the Mind” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Broadview Press, 2019, 1720-1725.
Brathwaite, Kamamu. “The History of Voice” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Broadview Press, 2019, 1811-1816.
Burke, Edmund. “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Broadview Press, 2019, 56-63.
