Tranquebar in Danish Literature

A Project by Kirsten Thisted, associate professor, Ph.D.

Institute of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies, Department of Minority Studies, University of Copenhagen

The Project is sponsered by Bikuben Foundation and is part of Galathea3

The project will study Danish representations of Tranquebar from a narratological point of view. This study is part of a larger project, comparing Danish representations of the Arctic with Danish representations of the Tropics.

What type of narratives does Tranquebar call forth? How is the relation between the representations in literary narratives (prose fiction, poems, childrens books etc.), historical sources (missionaries’ diaries, contemporary accounts etc.) and later historiography/schoolbooks?

Over the years, what have been the official stories about Danish colonial power and the Danish mission – and is it possible to find competing/divergent stories/discourses in the material?

Colonialism and the effects of colonialism is a topic, which is generally overlooked, in Danish literary critic. Likewise, postcolonial theory is rarely applied as concerns the study of Danish historical sources, history books etc. However, Danish colonialism, and especially the history of the Danish mission, plays an important role in Danish nation building as well as in the construction of ”Danish identity”.

What kind of identity/identities does the material establish as ”Danish”, as compared to other European and non-European identities represented in Tranquebar?

Is ”being Danish” the same in different representations of the Tropics – and in representations of the Arctic?

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