Re-writing as re-visioning

Abstract

In the course of a ‘memorial history’ (that is, the history of how events or persons are recalled by social communities) it is to a great degree the mode of remembering which effects changes in the shape and meaning of the past. Modes of remembering are modes of re-presenting the past. The aim of this essay is to explore the way in which literary forms generate specific modes of remembering. I will look at features such as narrative voice, focalisation, metaphors, intertextuality, and plot structures of the literary (re-)writing of the ‘Indian Mutiny’ (1857) which has been taking place over a time span of almost 150 years, in order to provide some insights into one of literature's potential functions, its power to re-vision the past, in imperial and post-colonial cultures of memory. A broader aim of the essay is to show in exemplary fashion how the field of post-colonial studies can usefully apply concepts of cultural memory.

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