The narrative dimensions of empire : time and space in the British imperial imaginary, 1819-1855

Over the course of the nineteenth century, writers showed an increased interest in the representation of two or more moments of simultaneous action. Often this interest has been understood as a response to the new “space-collapsing” technologies of the age such as the railway or the telegraph. However, I argue that such narratives are better understood in the context of the storytelling practices of the imperial state. These practices, which I call “proximity plots,” minimize the anarchic geographic realities faced by states while comforting and their audiences with the assurance that the world is smaller than it seems. I begin my project with the stakes of that lie. In my first chapter I consider the travel writings of Joseph Wolff, whose ill-fated attempt to rescue two British officers imprisoned in central Asia was informed, in part, by a sense of the world cultivated through these proximity plots. While his attempt ended in failure, the narrative of that attempt relies on the same storytelling gymnastics that helped justify it. To understand these techniques, I next look to Walter Scott’s three “crusader” novels. In my analysis, Scott emerges as a crucial thinker whose novels conjure a nation unified both socially and temporally. Wolff’s application and replication of narrative techniques employed by Scott helps us understand how literary production can directly shape how we understand the world around us. After Scott, I turn to William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Newcomes and consider how that novel undermines Scott’s temporal politics, offering a view of the world as significantly bigger and less manageable than Scott’s marauding knights might prefer. Critically, in the story I tell, it is the novelist Thackeray, rather than the journalist-adventurer Wolff, who ultimately recognizes the limits of the narrative production of proximity. Thackeray’s era saw the realization of these dreams of simultaneity with the expansion of the telegraph network and the growth of steam packets that offered global service. But rather than take these innovations for granted or use them as the foundation for an even more aggressive temporal utopianism, Thackeray emphasizes their fragility.Englis