For Immediate Release

February 4, 2004

CONTACT: Pam Joseph at (419) 995-8284 or Jon Rockhold at (419) 995-8390

Book by OSU professor looks at psychology of imperialism

Dr. David D. Adams, associate professor of English at The Ohio State University at Lima, is the author of a new book from Cornell University Press. Colonial Odysseys: Empire and Epic in the Modernist Novel explores the combination of imperial and odyssey themes in works such as Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out, and E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India.

Adams observes that these novels adapt the ancient odyssey story to the British empire at a time when the empire comprised one-fourth of the world's land and population. Characters in such novels travel from the center of the empire to its farthest outposts and then die before returning home. The authors reveal how theological anxieties shape both the confidence of the imperialists and their underlying unease with imperial rule. Thus Adams demonstrates that imperial power serves in part as a failed attempt to compensate for a loss of religious meaning.

Colonial Odysseys will soon be available at the Lima Campus Bookstore or can be ordered from Cornell University Press at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

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