The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature and History After Empire - Paperback

by Sam Goodman (Author)

The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature & History After Empire undertakes a detailed analysis of the use of medicine as a recurrent and defining trope of post-imperial fiction published between 1950 and 1990. The book argues that during this crucial period of recent history, when the influence and prestige of the British Empire was nearing its end, a range of contemporary novelists including J. G. Farrell, Paul Scott, John Masters, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and Salman Rushdie identified and used medicine as a discursive paradigm through which to engage critically with the history, authority and legacy of the British Empire within their writing. Drawing on a range of literary and archival sources, this work explores the complex relationship between Britain, India and Empire through a medical lens, bringing together the concerns of literary study and medical history under an interdisciplinary and original methodological framework.

Author Biography

Sam Goodman is Principal Academic in English & Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. His research interests focus on formations of identity in relation to literature and the medical humanities, particularly around Britishness, and the history and legacy of the British Empire. He is the author of British Spy Fiction & the End of Empire (Routledge, 2016), and editor of Medicine, Health & the Arts: Approaches to Medical Humanities (Routledge, 2014).