Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination

European travel writing (1512–1984) represented Malaysia as a tropical Garden of Eden, an image that has also percolated into literary texts concerning the region. This article examines spatial images in British fiction through the framework of archetypal literary criticism and theories of colonial...

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Main Author:	Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah
Format:	Article
Language:	English English English English
Published:	Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University 2014
Subjects:	PR English literature
Online Access:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/2/Siti_Nuraishah_Cerification.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/4/siti_nuraishah_final.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/7/IREP_NO.29773.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/9/29773_Malaysia%20as%20the%20Archetypal%20Garden%20in%20the%20British%20Creative%20Imagination_SCOPUS.pdf

id	iium-29773
recordtype	eprints
spelling	iium-297732017-09-20T02:31:19Z http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/ Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah PR English literature European travel writing (1512–1984) represented Malaysia as a tropical Garden of Eden, an image that has also percolated into literary texts concerning the region. This article examines spatial images in British fiction through the framework of archetypal literary criticism and theories of colonial representations of space to reveal the worlding (Spivak 1999) of Malaysia as a garden. In order to ascertain the ways in which the garden archetype has been deployed by the British creative imagination in the past and the present, novels from the colonial and postcolonial periods have been selected for analysis. Three dominant incarnations of the garden archetype can be discerned throughout novels by Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, and Anthony Burgess: the lush, Romantic garden; the restrained, disciplined Victorian garden; and the barren, dried-up garden. The postcolonial British novel, for its part, deploys images of the barren garden revived (William Riviere’s Borneo Fire) as well as a return to the earlier Conradian image of the Romantic locus amoenus (Frederick Lees’ Fool’s Gold). This article concludes that the representation of Malaysia in various guises of the archetypal garden negates the indigenous worldview concerning space and produces instead “knowledge” about Malaysia rooted in the white man’s perspective Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University 2014 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/2/Siti_Nuraishah_Cerification.pdf application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/4/siti_nuraishah_final.pdf application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/7/IREP_NO.29773.pdf application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/9/29773_Malaysia%20as%20the%20Archetypal%20Garden%20in%20the%20British%20Creative%20Imagination_SCOPUS.pdf Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah (2014) Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination. Southeast Asian Studies. ISSN 0563-8682 (In Press) http://englishkyoto-seas.org/
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Local University
institution	International Islamic University Malaysia
building	IIUM Repository
collection	Online Access
language	English English English English
topic	PR English literature
spellingShingle	PR English literature Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination
description	European travel writing (1512–1984) represented Malaysia as a tropical Garden of Eden, an image that has also percolated into literary texts concerning the region. This article examines spatial images in British fiction through the framework of archetypal literary criticism and theories of colonial representations of space to reveal the worlding (Spivak 1999) of Malaysia as a garden. In order to ascertain the ways in which the garden archetype has been deployed by the British creative imagination in the past and the present, novels from the colonial and postcolonial periods have been selected for analysis. Three dominant incarnations of the garden archetype can be discerned throughout novels by Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, and Anthony Burgess: the lush, Romantic garden; the restrained, disciplined Victorian garden; and the barren, dried-up garden. The postcolonial British novel, for its part, deploys images of the barren garden revived (William Riviere’s Borneo Fire) as well as a return to the earlier Conradian image of the Romantic locus amoenus (Frederick Lees’ Fool’s Gold). This article concludes that the representation of Malaysia in various guises of the archetypal garden negates the indigenous worldview concerning space and produces instead “knowledge” about Malaysia rooted in the white man’s perspective
format	Article
author	Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah
author_facet	Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah
author_sort	Ahmad, Siti Nuraishah
title	Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination
title_short	Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination
title_full	Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination
title_fullStr	Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination
title_full_unstemmed	Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination
title_sort	malaysia as the archetypal garden in the british creative imagination
publisher	Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University
publishDate	2014
url	http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/2/Siti_Nuraishah_Cerification.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/4/siti_nuraishah_final.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/7/IREP_NO.29773.pdf http://irep.iium.edu.my/29773/9/29773_Malaysia%20as%20the%20Archetypal%20Garden%20in%20the%20British%20Creative%20Imagination_SCOPUS.pdf
first_indexed	2023-09-18T20:43:45Z
last_indexed	2023-09-18T20:43:45Z
_version_	1777409537402208256

Malaysia as the Archetypal Garden in the British Creative Imagination

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