| Summary: | My analysis rests on the hypothesis that these dispossessed collectives articulated their identities out of their transoceanic background; accordingly I argue that the maritime crossing and the fluid boundaries of the oceans provided socio-political possibilities of liberation for collectives oppressed by the machinery of Victorian imperialism. Nora Hague’s and Colum McCann’s novels are narrated in the Atlantic Ocean whereas Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy is set in the Indian Ocean. This PhD thesis navigates therefore in two different directions and aims at exploring both oceanic regions – as well as the cultural and historical connections between them – and their contribution to global narrations in the nineteenth century. Obviously, this PhD thesis acknowledges the existence of further oceanic zones as a limitation of this project. Due to spatial and analytical constraints, the Pacific and Arctic Oceans remain outside the focus of this PhD thesis but they indeed provide areas for further follow-up research in the neo-Victorian maritime novel for which this project lays the groundwork. The thesis is divided into 6 chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 constitute the critical and methodological basis of this PhD; in particular I provide an in-depth overview of maritime criticism (including a thorough roll-call of postcolonial thought) and neo-Victorian criticism. Chapter 4 analyses neo-Victorian narrations of the Atlantic, specifically Hague’s Letters from an Age of Reason and McCann’s TransAtlantic, and it focuses on the transatlantic interactions between African Americans and Victorian Britain, as well as between Irish immigrants escaping the Irish Famine and African American abolitionists. Chapter 5 moves the focus to the Indian Ocean and analyses Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, paying particular attention to the phenomenon of indentureship and the material after-effects that Victorian transoceanic exploits in the Indian Ocean have triggered in today’s global capitalism. Chapter 6 provides the conclusions derived from the ...
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