Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T14:40:42.409Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Imagination's Commonwealth”: Edmund Blunden's Hong Kong Dialogue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Elaine Yee Lin Ho
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay posits that literary studies at the University of Hong Kong during the cold war 1950s exemplify how English as an academic subject is transmuted through the peripheral voices that engage with metropolitan literature. Focusing on the term “imagination's commonwealth,” which the poet and critic Edmund Blunden (1896–1974) invented to denote transnational literary communion, I show how it departs from imperial literary diffusion and how Blunden's poetry and professorial career at Hong Kong University enact the departure. As his interlocutors and partners, Blunden's students played a crucial role in the emergence of a literary commonwealth. In their dialogue with Blunden, they not only query his conception but also push against the boundaries of their own colonial and cold war situation.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 76 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minnesota: U of Minneapolis P, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Bin Abdul Latiff, Ibrahim. Letter. Eastern Horizon 1.8 (1961): 2–3. Print.Google Scholar
Blunden, Edmund. “The Author's Last Words to His Students.” Edmund Blunden: A Selection of His Poetry and Prose Made by Kenneth Hopkins. London: Hart-Davies, 1950. 367. Print.Google Scholar
Blunden, Edmund. “China in English Literature.” Eastern Horizon. 1.2 (1960): 27–33. Print.Google Scholar
Blunden, Edmund. “Chinese Paperknife.” Blunden, Hong Kong House 11.Google Scholar
Blunden, Edmund. “English Literature in Japan.” Introduction. Keats' View of Poetry. By Takeshi Saito. London: Cobden, 1929. 9–19. Print.Google Scholar
Blunden, Edmund. A Hong Kong House: Poems, 1951–1961. 1962. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Blunden, Edmund. “The Sleeping Amah.” Blunden, Hong Kong House. 9.Google Scholar
Blunden, Edmund. Undertones of War. London: Cobden, 1928. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Blunden, Edmund. “View from a Hong Kong Office.” Hong Kong Business Symposium: A Compilation of Authoritative Views on the Administration, Commerce, and Resources of Britain's Far East Outpost. Comp. J. M. Braga. Hong Kong: South China Morning Post, 1957. 23. Print.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. In Other Words: Essays towards a Reflexive Sociology. Trans. Matthew Adamson. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters. Trans. M. B. DeBevoise. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Ching, Chau Wah, Man, Lo King, and Kin, Yung Kai, eds. Edmund Blunden: Sixty-Five. Hong Kong: U of Hong Kong, 1961. Print.Google Scholar
Chow, Rey. Ethics after Idealism: Theory, Culture, Ethnicity, Reading. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Choy, Anne. “Yalding.” Chau, Lo, and Yung 75–76.Google Scholar
Cochran, Terry. “The Linguistic Economy of the Cosmopolitical.” Boundary 2 26.2 (1999): 59–72. Print.Google Scholar
Djao, Irene C. “From Irene C. Djao.” Chau, Lo, and Yung 84.Google Scholar
Paul, Fussell. The Great War and Modern Memory. New York: Oxford UP, 1975. Print.Google Scholar
Gikandi, Simon. “Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality.” South Atlantic Quarterly 100.3 (2001): 627–58. Print.Google Scholar
Gikandi, Simon. Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, Ho Elaine Yee. “Imperial Globalization and Colonial Transactions: ‘African Lugard’ and the University of Hong Kong.” Critical Zone 2. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2006. 107–45. Print.Google Scholar
Ingham, Mike. “Writing on the Margin: Hong Kong English Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Non-Fiction.” City Voices: Hong Kong Writing in English, 1945 to the Present. Ed. Xi, Xu and Ingham, Mike. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Kerr, Douglas. Introduction. Blunden, Hong Kong House 99–106.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, B. J. A Bibliography of Edmund Blunden. Oxford: Clarendon, 1979. Print.Google Scholar
Leavis, F. R. New Bearings in English Poetry: A Study of the Contemporary Situation. 1932. London: Penguin, 1976. Print.Google Scholar
Liang, Lee Kok. London Does Not Belong to Me. Ed. Harrax, Syd and Wilson, Bernard. Petaling Jaya: Maya, 2003. Print.Google ScholarPubMed
Liu, Pengju. “Eastern Diary.” Editorial. Eastern Horizon 1.1 (1960): 5–6. Print.Google Scholar
Liu, Pengju. “Eastern Diary.” Editorial. Eastern Horizon 2.7 (1962): 6. Print.Google Scholar
Man, Lo King. “From Lo King Man.” Chau, Lo, and Yung 137–39.Google Scholar
Louis, William Roger. “Hong Kong: The Critical Phase, 1945–1949.” American Historical Review 102.4 (1997): 1052–84. Print.Google Scholar
Mulhern, Francis. “English Reading.” Nation and Narration. Ed. Bhabha, Homi. London: Routledge, 1990. 250–64. Print.Google Scholar
“No Daydreams in Peking: European Visitors' Impressions.” London Times 31 Dec. 1955: 1. Print.Google Scholar
“On Many Horizons (News and Views).” Reuters. Eastern Horizon 2.7 (1962): 8. Print.Google Scholar
Quinn, Patrick J., and Trout, Steven, eds. The Literature of the Great War Reconsidered: Beyond Modern Memory. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robbins, Bruce. “Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism.” Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation. Ed. Robbins, and Cheah, Pheng. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1998. 1–20. Print.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. Beginnings: Intention and Method. New York: Basic, 1975. Print.Google Scholar
Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners. Harlow: Longman, 1956. Print.Google Scholar
Shih, Shu-mei. The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semi-colonial China, 1917–1937. Berkeley: California UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Three Women's Texts and a Critique of Imperialism.” 1985. “Race,” Writing, and Difference. Ed. Gates, Henry Louis Jr. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1986. 262–80. Print.Google Scholar
Sunder Rajan, Rajeswari, ed. The Lie of the Land: English Literary Studies in India. Delhi: Oxford UP, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Tay, William. “Colonialism, the Cold War Era, and Marginal Space.” Trans. Michelle Yeh. Chinese Literature in the Second Half of a Modern Century: A Critical Survey. Ed. Chi, Pang Yuan and Wang, David Der-wei. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000. 31–37. Print.Google Scholar
Tsang, Steve. Democracy Shelved: Great Britain, China, and Attempts at Constitutional Reform in Hong Kong, 1945–1952. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Tsang, Steve. A Modern History of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquests: Literary Study and British Rule in India. New York: Columbia UP, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Webb, Barry. Edmund Blunden: A Biography. New Haven: Yale UP, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Wright, Richard. The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference. 1956. Jackson: Mississippi UP, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Hin, Yeung Ngai. “Something Aeolian.” Chau, Lo, and Yung 184–88.Google Scholar