Division in the nineteenth-century - Essay Example

This is the prompt. I only need help with the beginning page I’m going to provide. I’ll highlight for you in red what he wants me to add to what I’vewritten. The blue is what I’ve written. The black is the prompt. A postcolonial literature is hybrid by nature because it’s created by a clash between imperial hegemony and native resistance, by the empire’s definition of its colonies and their peoples as Other. Published in 1917–just before Irish independence—Joyce’s Portrait displays this hybrid nature in its politics: it offers a critique of British imperialism, and it offers a critique of Irish nationalist agendas too.

For example, Stephen Dedalus identifies (like his father) with Parnell, the fallen champion of Irish independence (“Home Rule”), yet he later rejects the Gaelic nativism and nationalism of his college friend Davin. Write an essay that analyzes and illustrates the hybrid postcolonial attitudes toward Irish politics, language, and culture in Portrait. The Christmas dinner scene, Stephen’s conversation with the dean of studies, or his exchanges with Davin are examples of passages you might consider.

What the teacher wants me to add. You havent defined what "hybrid attitudes" are and I dont understand what this sentence means:  "These hybrid attitudes Stephen encounters throughout the novel only help Stephen strive for his own identity and escape the connection the Irish have made with the dominant culture---the English."  I dont know what "hybrid attitudes" could "help Stephen strive for his own identity and escape the connection . . . with .  . the English," which contradicts the whole idea of postcolonial hybridity.

  First youd need to tell us what "hybrid attitudes" you mean (Im not aware of any).  The Christmas dinner scene, for example, doesnt show us a hybrid culture; it shows hostility between two different political/religious causes (which youd have to name and explain before wed undestand them):  theyre not "hybrid" in themselves.  Im not sure youre understanding what the question says about "hybridity your statement isnt true: Stephen *cant* "escape the connection . . . with . . . the English.

"  That he cant escape it is what makes *his* identity hybrid and postcolonial.  And the "attitudes" youre discssuing below arent hybrids:  Mr. Casey is a Parnellite who favors Irish independence (the "native" side); Dante, because of her Catholicism, is anti-Parnellite and therefore sides with British political interests (the "imperial" side).  Both scenes are relevant and yes the xmas dinner scene about the political interests of the colonizer vs colonized and the lecture hall scene with the dean is about the language of colonizer vs colonized but to make it hybrid you have to COMBINE the two, colonized and colonizer for form a new hybrid thing.

Example: If a cat with a dark coat mates with a cat with a white coat, you get cats with medium colored coats. THEY ARE the hybrid-the medium colored cats NOT the dark and light colored cats. You keep looking a the dark (imperial_ and the light(native) cats when you need to look for the ones with medium coats===the product of the clash between colonized and colonizer is what’s postcolonial. So you need to find what the product or combination of these clashes is. And it is Stephen’s identity, that’s the hybrid.

There are other hybrids in Portrait too, but for the most part just think about it this way, what happens as a result of the opposed political positions that we hear about in the xmas dinner scene? Stephen and his politics are the hybrid that’s formed for the opposition of colonizer and colonized.   Postcolonial literature is a juxtaposition of the culture of the Imperialistic nations and the natives. Postcolonial theory does not introduce a novice culture, alien to the cultural norms of the indigenous, nor does it produce the ancestral culture of the natives; rather the theory is a conglomeration of elements derived from the cultures of both the colonizer and the colonized.

The development of the identity of the native therefore represents a balance between native cultural values and their antithesis as introduced by the colonizers. Therefore, hybridity in postcolonial literature refers to the ‘in-betweeness’ of the attitudes of the characters that have developed as a result of clash of two different schools of thought. In A Portrait of An Artist as a Yong Man, by James Joyce, Joyce writes about various people in nineteenth-century Ireland who possess hybrid attitudes towards politics, language, and culture.

This hybridity reflects the product of the native’s view of politics and the view of the colonizer’s. Joyce has construed a hybrid that has the characteristics of both indigenous and the Imperial side. Through various scenes in the novel Joyce expresses these hybrid attitudes specifically in the Christmas dinner scene about religion and politics with Dante and Mr. Casey, and in the discussion over Stephen’s word choice with the dean of studies. The conflicting attitudes that Stephen encounters throughout the novel only help Stephen strive for his own identity; however he is not able to escape the connection the Irish have made with the dominant culture---the English.

This connection of the English and the Irish illustrates a hybridity of culture that influences Stephan’s identity to assume a hybrid and postcolonial nature as well. Stephen’s conversation with Davin about his Irish heritage, along with the journal entries at the end of the novel, blend together with the rest of the examples provided by Joyce in conceiving the hybridity of postcolonial attitudes regarding Irish language, culture, and politics.       Hybrid attitudes first surface in the Christmas dinner scene with Dante and Mr. Casey. Dante feels like many Irish people do in the nineteenth-century about God being first in one’s life and nothing else.

When secularists like Mr. Casey disrupts this usual thinking of the Irish by mentioning people who want to make a difference for Ireland, like Parnell for example, this causes conflict and reveals to us the differences in attitudes that are rife when it comes to politics, religion and even culture. She is not happy at all with Mr. Casey’s opinion about God being first to everyone in Ireland. The clashes in these attitudes affect the thought process of Stephan such that his identity and politics emerge as homogenized mixes of both opinions.

In various other instances in the novel, for example the debate over the language of the natives and the colonizer in the lecture hall, are representative of the hybridity of Stephan’s identity that does not purely contain elements of one faction; rather it interweaves the opinions of both parties and gives rise to a balanced mix.