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Colonial discourse and William Makepeace Thackeray's 'Irish Sketch Book.'

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From: Papers on Language & Literature
Date: 19930622
Author:Brewer, Kenneth L., Jr.

William Makepeace Thackeray's 'Irish Sketch Book' can be read as an intervention into the public sphere to counter the stereotypes about the Irish propagated by supposedly high culture. Interpretations of Thackeray's travel writing as racist ignore the self-conscious crafting of the text as a direct address to the readers or the public sphere. A further analysis of who the readers were, based on the theories of Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha and Edward Said, will reveal the process of colonial discourse.

INTRODUCTION: DISCURSIVE ECONOMIES

"Some hundred years hence," Thackeray writes ...

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