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The Opium Trade and Little Dorrit: A Case of Reading Silences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Wenying Xu
Wenying Xu
Affiliation:
Northeast Missouri State University
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Extract

Nationalism and imperialism in nineteenth-century European literature, located within a theoretical framework of Self/Other, have been the subject of much recent interest. Such projects focus chiefly on representations of the Other in descriptions, images, and evaluations. Sometimes, however, the affirmation of the national Self in such literature is achieved by the total or near total obliteration of the Other. In such cases it is on non-representations, or to use Macherey's word “silences,” that one's reading of such texts must be focused if their nationalistic and imperialistic character is to be exposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 53 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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