ABSTRACT
Benita Parry has always been particularly attentive to the traditions of thinkers who, in the name of the factual, in the name of simple scholarship, spoke plainly about where their research had taken them, whether the English profession liked the results or not. Benita's discourse is always grand, high—carried out with a dignity beyond emotion, and for all that more crushing. Benita Parry explored the topics associated with postcolonial studies a full two decades before others encountered them, elaborating them in Delusions and Discoveries. Benita armed with a documentary and contextual reading better than is provided by the thin exercise of the language of "alterities." Benita Parry is not merely a critic, and not merely one who finds others wanting. On the contrary, her most recent work offers a positive proposal: namely, the sketching out of a literary aesthetics of the imperial imaginary.
