'The Sea is History': Transoceanic Perspectives on the Neo-Victorian Maritime Novel

Abstract

This PhD thesis examines a selection of postcolonial neo-Victorian novels in the context of oceanic migration during the nineteenth century. The Victorian period (1837-1901) in Britain features today as a fulcrum point for the concept of the nation as well as for transoceanic migration and global politics. In fact, by the end of the nineteenth century, the British Empire encompassed all the oceans of the world and it had a marked impact on the lives of millions of people. That said, this PhD thesis aims at establishing alternative perspectives on globalisation, global history and transculturation via an analysis of neo-Victorian novels that deal with race, hybridity and British imperial history in the context of transoceanic voyages during the nineteenth century. The oceanic focus that characterises this PhD thesis allows to think on, through and beyond rigid national and cultural boundaries that seem to be articulating current global politics, particularly in the face of the fact that far-right political parties are increasingly gathering support for policies based on the building of walls, the patrolling of borders and the hatred for the Other. The corpus of primary works that have been selected for qualitative analysis includes the following novels: Nora Hague’s Letters from an Age of Reason (2001); Colum McCann’s TransAtlantic (2013); and Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, which comprises Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011) and Flood of Fire (2015). These neo-Victorian novels retrieve histories of transoceanic migrations during the Victorian era by colonial subjects such as African-American ex-slaves, black sailors, Irish immigrants or Asian indentured workers.