Research Catalog

Title

Radio empire : the BBC's Eastern Service and the emergence of the global anglophone novel / Daniel Ryan Morse.

Author

Morse, Daniel Ryan

Publication

New York City : Columbia University Press, [2020]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 271 pages : illustrations; 23 cm.

Summary

"The BBC's Empire Service was a cauldron of global modernism. James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake found an audience among radio listeners in India, while C. L. R. James read his anticolonial novel The Black Jacobins to listeners throughout the British empire. Writers tested aesthetics, audience, and form before Empire Service microphones, broadcasting these experiments to the colonies before they were made available in England. Rather than spreading imperial views to peripheral colonies, as prevailing scholarship has argued, the BBC in Radio Empire is a contact zone and site of experimentation and contestation. Modernist writers did not simply prop up the empire. Instead, the need to appeal to discerning, well-educated listeners at the edges of the empire pushed the boundaries of literary work in London, inspired high-cultural broadcasting in England, and formed an invisible but influential global cultural network. Morse analyzes how radio's instantaneity and global reach were instrumental in imagining cultural relations during, after, and against imperialism. Far from a monolithic entity, the BBC offers a wide variety of responses to various modernities. The book brings original archival research to bear on the burgeoning scholarly interest in global modernism. Drawing examples from broadcasting by Indian, Nigerian, Irish, Trinidadian, and English writers such as Joyce, James, Forster, Mulk Raj Anand, Attia Hosain, Venu Chitale, and Wole Soyinka, this book expands our knowledge of broadcasting outside of Western Europe and demonstrates the ways in which the BBC Empire Service offers a new understanding of the relationship between colonial center and periphery and how the radio service often undermined the British imperial world view. By reading unpublished radio scripts from the BBC's archives alongside novels, Morse offers a compelling interdisciplinary argument to understand the development of Global Anglophone culture"--

Series Statement

Modernist latitudes

Uniform Title

Modernist latitudes.

Subject

• BBC World Service > History > 20th century
• BBC World Service
• 1900-1999
• English fiction > 20th century > History and criticism
• English fiction > Foreign countries > History and crticism
• Radio broadcasting, British > History > 20th century
• Radio and literature > Great Britain
• English fiction
• Radio and literature
• Radio broadcasting, British
• Great Britain

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages [241]-254) and index.

Contents

Finnegans Waves: James Joyce Between the BBC and 2RN -- Reviewing Some Books: E. M. Forster as Blind Uncle -- The End of Empire: Mulk Raj Anand's Comparative Modernisms -- Intimate and Kaleidosonic Styles: Attia Hosain, Venu Chitale, and the Hybrid Novel -- Epilogue: The Eastern Service in the Era of Decolonization.

Call Number

MWGK (Great Britain) 21-1219

ISBN

• 9780231198363
• 0231198361
• 9780231198370
• 023119837X
• 9780231552592 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2020009242

OCLC

1147927133

Author

Morse, Daniel Ryan, author.

Title

Radio empire : the BBC's Eastern Service and the emergence of the global anglophone novel / Daniel Ryan Morse.

Publisher

New York City : Columbia University Press, [2020]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Modernist latitudes

Modernist latitudes.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages [241]-254) and index.

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Other Form:

Online version: Morse, Daniel Ryan, Radio empire New York City : Columbia University Press, 2020. 9780231552592 (DLC) 2020009243

Research Call Number

MWGK (Great Britain) 21-1219