" ... Documents the history and development of [Post-colonial literatures in English, together with English and American literature] and includes original research relating to the literatures of some 50 countries and territories. In more than 1,600 entries written by more than 600 internationally recognized scholars, it explores the effect of the colonial and post-colonial experience on literatures in English worldwide.
The past century has witnessed the extraordinary flowering of fiction, poetry and drama from countries previously colonised by Britain, an output which has changed the map of English literature. This introduction, from a leading figure in the field, explores a wide range of Anglophone post-colonial writing from Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, India, Ireland and Britain. Lyn Innes compares the ways in which authors shape communal identities and interrogate the values and representations of peoples in newly independent nations. Placing its emphasis on literary rather than theoretical texts, this book offers detailed discussion of many internationally renowned authors, including James Joyce, Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, Les Murray and Derek Walcott. It also includes historical surveys of the main countries discussed, a glossary, and biographical notes on major authors. Lyn Innes provides a rich and subtle guide to a vast array of authors and texts from a wide range of sites.
Colonial and Postcolonial Literature is the leading critical overview of and historical introduction to colonial and postcolonial literary studies. Highly praised from the time of its first publication for its lucidity, breadth, and insight, the book has itself played a crucial part in founding and shaping this rapidly expanding field. The author, an internationally renowned postcolonial critic, provides a broad contextualizing narrative about the evolution of colonial and postcolonial writing in English. Illuminating close readings of texts by a wide variety of writers - from Kipling and Conrad through to Kincaid, from Ngugi to Noonuccal and Naipaul - explicate key theoretical terms such as 'subaltern', 'colonial resistance', 'writing back', and 'hybridity'. This revised edition includes new critiques of postcolonial women's writing, an expanded and fully annotated bibliography, and a new chapter and conclusion on postcolonialism exploring keynote debates in the field relating to sexuality, transnationalism, and local resistance.
Includes critical essays on William Shakespeare's The Tempest; Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe; Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre; Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness; Rudyard Kipling's Kim; James Joyce's Ulysses; E.M. Forster's A passage to India; and, Salman Rushdie's The satanic verses.
In this original and accessible introduction to post-colonial literatures in English, Dennis Walder guides the reader through the historical, linguistic, and theoretical issues that inform post-colonial literary study.
Exploring literatures from a range of countries this book provides a comprehensive introduction to some of the central features of language in a wide variety of postcolonial texts.
The experience of colonization and the challenges of a post-colonial world have produced an explosion of new writing in English. This diverse and powerful body of literature has established a specific practice of post-colonial writing in cultures as various as India, Australia, the West Indies and Canada, and has challenged both the traditional canon and dominant ideas of literature and culture. The Empire Writes Back was the first major theoretical account of a wide range of post-colonial texts and their relation to the larger issues of post-colonial culture, and remains one of the most significant works published in this field. The authors, three leading figures in post-colonial studies, open up debates about the interrelationships of post-colonial literatures, investigate the powerful forces acting on language in the post-colonial text, and show how these texts constitute a radical critique of Eurocentric notions of literature and language. This book is brilliant not only for its incisive analysis, but for its accessibility for readers new to the field. Now with an additional chapter and an updated bibliography, The Empire Writes Back is essential for contemporary post-colonial studies.
Postcolonial studies is attentive to cultural differences, marginalisation and exclusion. Such studies pay equal attention to the lives and conditions of various racial minorities in the West, as well as to regional, indigenous forms of representation around the world as being distinct from a dominant Western tradition. With the consolidation of the field in the past forty years, the need to establish the terms by which we might understand the sources of postcolonial literary history is more urgent now than ever before. The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature is the first major collaborative overview of the field. A mix of geographic and thematic chapters allows for different viewpoints on postcolonial literary history. Chapters cover the most important national traditions, as well as more comparative geographical and thematic frameworks. This major reference work will set the future agenda for the field, whilst also synthesising its development for scholars and students.
The term ‘postcolonial literatures in English’ designates English-language literatures from Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania, as well as the literatures of diasporic communities who have moved from those regions to the global north. This volume introduces the central themes of postcolonial literary studies and delineates how these themes are reflected and elaborated in exemplary literary works by postcolonial authors from around the world. It also offers succinct definitions of key terms like Orientalism, hybridity, Indigeneity or writing back.
