An Interpretation Of A Passage To India From The Perspective Of Contrapuntal Reading

Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) is considered as one of the greatest novelitsts in20hcentury Britain. Since its publication of his masterpiece A Passage to India, it has arousedwide concern among the cirtical writings. Applying the theory of Said’s contrapuntal readingto review Forster’s famous novel, A Passage to India, the author of the thesis makes anattempt to excavate the repressed or the excluded histoircal background hidden in the contextto reveal Forster’s imperialist ideology, to further explore the collusion between the literatureand the impeiralism, by means of textual scrutiny of the typical characters, geographicaldomains and different religions.The thesis starts by presenting a review of relevant studies at home and abroad onForster and his masterpiece A Passage to India and makes a biref introduction to the structure,content, theoretical base and significance of the thesis. The theory of the thesis is Said’scontrapuntal reading which provides a new reading perspective of studies on Forster andstrengthen readers’ knowledge of the contrapuntal reading theory by demonstrations of theconcept formation, reading perspective and academic value. The thesis discusses the typicalcharacters~the male colonizer Fielding and the female colonizer Adela from the perspectiveof the contrapuntal reading to dissect the impeiralist hegemony and to show theanti-impeiralist resistance with the inquiry of the different mentalities and communicationways of the colonizers in the age of imperialism. Then, it makes a clear comparison betweenthe descriptions of the geographical domains—India and England to reappear the vassalcountry and the master country rfom the perspective of the contrapuntal reading to reveal theimperialist ideology hidden in the novel. At last, it explores the real purpose of describingthree religions~Christianity, Islam and Hinduism from the perspective of the contrapuntalreading to highlight the Euro-centirsm of the Englishmen and their cultural supeirority and togive explanations why Englishmen have a failed passage to India with the analysis of therespective believers―Mrs. Moore, Aziz and Godbole.