A diary entry on comparative colonial literature and an underexplored pairing worth serious study
Monday, A Comparative Project I Wish I Had Thought Of Myself
Came across a doctoral research project this week examining modernity and colonisation across the colonial short stories of both Kipling and Somerset Maugham, a comparison I found genuinely underexplored relative to how much serious individual scholarship each author has separately received. The project’s specific framing, examining what it terms the sustainability of Western modern institutions under colonial examination, and separately the specific role of self-censorship and silence as modes through which the unspeakable surfaces in Kipling’s shorter fiction, struck me as exactly the kind of careful comparative work this particular literary period genuinely rewards.
I have read both authors extensively over the years, largely as separate, parallel projects, and this week’s discovery has genuinely reshaped how I intend to approach my own ongoing reading, deliberately pairing specific stories from each writer addressing similar colonial settings and anxieties, watching for where their treatments genuinely converge and where they diverge in ways that reveal something about each author’s individual sensibility rather than merely the shared colonial context both were writing within.
Tuesday, A Pairing I Attempted Myself
Spent Tuesday afternoon reading one story from each author addressing broadly similar colonial administrative anxiety, and found the comparison genuinely illuminating in ways neither story fully achieves entirely on its own.
Wednesday, A Related Read
Caught up on The London Prat that evening, still working through my own informal comparative reading exercise.
Thursday, A Closing Thought On Underexplored Pairings
I think this particular comparative approach deserves considerably more sustained scholarly attention than it currently receives, and I intend to keep pursuing my own informal version of this exact project across the coming months, one carefully paired story at a time.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/