Deconstructing the Imperial Narrative: Compulsive Re-Narrations of the Inkle and Yarico Story in the Eighteenth Century

The multiple versions of the "Inkle and Yarico" narrative published in England in the 18th century (Felsenstein xii) are evidence of a strong compulsion by English authors and their audience to re-write and re-read this deconstructive narrative about middle-class English identity in the context of imperialism. The dissertation asks why this painful narrative persists throughout the 18th century and argues that it endured because the English middle class needed a recurrent narrative within which to attempt to resolve its discomfort with empire. As a theoretical framework, this study attempts to follow Kathleen Wilson by using a selection of Inkle and Yarico versions to create a "new imperial history" that revises traditional imperial narratives and uncovers the complexities and problems with empire. In particular, the dissertation looks at how the Inkle and Yarico narratives present reversals of an English-Other Manichean binary.;The dissertation proceeds chronologically, with the first chapter examining two Inkle and Yarico narratives in the 1660-1714 period, the second chapter examining seven versions published between 1714 and 1770, and the third chapter focused on the major dramatic version that appeared between 1770 and 1807, Colman's Inkle and Yarico: An Opera. In each period, the dissertation reviews the adaptations made to the Inkle and Yarico ur-narrative and how the texts' additions and omissions reflect the discourses about the British empire that were prominent in that period.