Dr. Mona Narain reimagines Britain through the eyes of the colonial Indian subject, via Elizabeth Hamilton's 1796 novel, Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah.
Following the adventures of the fictional Indian Rajah Zāārmilla in London, Elizabeth Hamilton's Letters upends stereotypical narratives of the imagined east. Staged in a series of letters, her novel refocusses 18th century Britain through the eyes of the colonised, comparing cultures and challenges the Indian aristocrat's initial adoration of imperial Britain. From the 'benevolent' British East India Company to the Orientalist scholars of the Asiatic Society, Letters embodies Britain's bids to justify their presence in India, but also the public's ambivalence towards colonisation. Using Zāārmilla's outsider perspective, Hamilton scathingly satirises social ills closer to home, speaking to her own marginalisation as an Irish-Scottish, woman writer.
PRESENTER: Dr. Mona Narain, professor of English at Texas Christian University and Scholarship Editor at ABO Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830. She is a Consultant Chair on American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Women's Caucus, and co-edits the Bucknell University Press Transits book series.
ART: Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, Elizabeth Hamilton (1796).
IMAGE: 'Translation of the letters of a Hindoo Rajah'.
SOUNDS: Blue Dot Sessions.
PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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