Critically examine the link between the teaching of English and Literary Texts.

In other words, why does a British national epic like Milton’s Paradise Lost become a canonised text in our universities? Why and how do we study it? The ideological agenda governing the entry of this epic in our universities underlines the link between British rule and English literary studies in India. The discourse of obedience that Paradise Lost enjoins upon Man towards his creator was transferred to the colonial context to implicate the colonised subject in a similar hierarchical position of subordination towards the imperial race. Thus, while Paradise Lost was a radical text in many ways, it was also deployed by the powers that be for oppressive, imperialist designs in our soil.

An English teacher student in India cannot ignore this placement of a text for the simple reason that English in India cannot be taught with any amount of political neutrality as is possible in the teaching of physics or statistics. In short, English studies in India involves an interrogation of class, gender, identity, language, power. and nationality as embedded in a literary text. How we teach English literature is determined by:

How we perceive literature as well as by

How we receive our colonial past.