Sri Lankan Traditions and the Imperial Imagination: Leonard Woolf's 'The Village in the Jungle'

Capturing the atmosphere of a live academic event, this podcast presents a full day of discussion from a symposium held at the University of Oxford. The gathering, organised by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, was convened to examine Leonard Woolf's first and most significant novel on the one hundredth anniversary of its publication. Leonard Woolf's The Village in the Jungle (1913): A Day Symposium offers direct access to the lectures and conversations that unfolded, placing this complex colonial text under a detailed and critical lens. Listeners are brought into the room to hear scholars grapple with the novel's unique position as both a modernist experiment and a profound document born from Woolf's experiences as a colonial administrator in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. The episodes delve into why this work remains startlingly relevant, analysing its narrative form and its unflinching portrayal of village life under imperial pressure. This isn't a produced narrative series, but rather an authentic audio record of intellectual exchange, allowing the audience to engage with the nuanced arguments and spontaneous debates that characterise a rigorous academic workshop. For anyone interested in colonial literature, modernism, or the life and lesser-known work of Leonard Woolf, this podcast provides a rich, immersive listen straight from the heart of Oxford scholarship.