ABSTRACT
Colonial literature, as we have seen, moved between a variety of opposites: objectivity and imaginative empathy, Realism and exoticism, separatist and metropolitan tendencies. These forces can ben seen at work in all colonial literature and in every topic which it took up. We begin by examining colonial literature’s presentation of the landscape in the colonies: a morally and politically neutral topic, but one which shows something of the range of relationships possible between the literary imagination and the more concrete aims of imperial conquest.
