ABSTRACT
The previous chapter has shown the wide range of imaginative responses which might be evoked by the colonial landscape, the relationship between the imagination, more or less empathetically involved with the strangeness of another world, and the imperial mentality with its unruffled confidence in white attitudes. In responding to the colonized peoples, however, writers faced a more challenging call to reconcile imagination and imperialism. It challenged not merely the artist’s eye but also the power of imagination to move beyond the prejudices and narrow experiences of the colonials. At issue was the quality of human response, sincerity of commitment to human values and loyalty to personal experience rather than to received opinions. We shall therefore in this chapter be less concerned to catalogue the brutal stereotypes put forward in colonial fiction than to suggest reasons for their victory over curiosity and imagination. We concentrate on those writers who prided themselves on exploring as well as conquering and who sought intimacy rather than distance in their dealings with the ‘Native’.
