Literatures in English

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Literatures in English

• The Postcolonial Novel

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• British Empire in
• 1897
• British colonial possessions are coloured in
  pink.

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From Post-colonial studies the key-concepts,
(Ashcroft et al., 2007)

• Edward Said offers the following distinction
  imperialism means the practice, the theory, and
  the attitudes of a dominating metrpolitan centre
  ruling a distant territory colonialism, which is
  almost always a consequence of imperialism, is
  the implementing of settlements on distant
  territory. (E. Said, 1993 8)

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problems of terminology and categorisation

• Commonwealth literatures
• Third World literatures
• (New) Litertures in English
• Post-colonial/Postcolonial literatures
• Shared features should not obscure the
  specificity
• of multiple and different experiences of
  colonialism

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Some shared features of postcolonial texts

• Preoccupation with history
• The (re)construction of national identity
• The centrality of language
• Confrontation with the Western Canon and its
  modes of representation
• Examining conditions of migration, exile and
  diaspora

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B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, from
The Empire Writes Back, 1989

• What each of these literatures has in common
  beyond their special and distinctive regional
  characteristics is that they emerged in their
  present form out of the experience of
  colonization and asserted themselves by
  foregrounding the tension with the imperial
  power, and by emphasizing their differences from
  the assumptions of the imperial centre. It is
  this which makes them distinctively
  post-colonial.

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Some African novelists

• Chinua Achebe (1930-)
• Things Fall Apart (1958)
• No Longer at Ease (1960)
• The Arrow of God (1965)
• A Man of the People (1966)
• Anthills of the Savannah (1987)

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From the African Writer and the English
Language, 1975

• Those of us who have inherited the English
  language may not be in a position to appreciate
  the value of the inheritance. Or we may go on
  resenting it because it came as part of a package
  deal which included many other items of doubtful
  value and the positive atrocity of racial
  arrogance and prejudice which may yet set the
  world on fire. But let us not in rejecting the
  evil throw out the good with it.

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Some African novelists

• Ngugi wa Thiongo (1938-)
• A Grain of Wheat (1967)
• Petals of Blood (1977)
• Devil on the Cross (English translation of
  Caitaani mutharaba-Ini) (1982)
• Wizard of the Crow (Murogi wa Kagogo) (2006)

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From Decolonising the Mind, 1986

• Language carries culture, and culture carries,
  particularly through orature and literature, the
  entire body of values by which we come to
  perceive ourselves and our place in the world.

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Some African novelists

• Ben Okri (1959-)
• Flowers and Shadows (1980)
• The Famished Road (1991)
• Songs of Enchantment (1993)
• Dangerous Love (1996)
• In Arcadia (2002)
• Starbook (2007)

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South African novelists

• Nadine Gordimer (1923-)
• The Conversationist (1974)
• Burgers Daughter (1979)
• Julys People (1981)
• The Pickup (2001)
• John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-)
• Waiting for Barbarians (1980)
• Life and Times of Michael K. (1983)
• Foe (1986)
• Disgrace (1999)
• Elizabeth Costello (2003)

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Some Australian novelists

• Patrick White (1912-1990)
• The Aunts Story (1948)
• Voss (1957)
• Riders in the Chariot (1961)
• The Vivisector (1970)
• A Fringe of Leaves (1976)
• Peter Carey (1943-)
• Bliss (1981)
• Oscar and Lucinda (1988)
• Jack Maggs (1997)

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Some Caribbean novelists

• Samuel Selvon (1923-1994)
• A Brighter Sun (1962)
• An Island Is a World (1955)
• The Lonely Londoners (1956)
• The Plains of Caroni (1970)
• Moses Ascending (1975)
• Moses Migrating (1983)

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Ida Kar, Samuel Selvon (1956)
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Some Caribbean novelists

• George Lamming (1927-)
• In the Castle of My Skin (1953)
• The Emigrants (1954)
• Water with Berries (1971)
• The Natives of My Person (1972)

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From The Pleasures of Exile, 1960

• "For I am a direct descendant of slaves, too near
  to the actual enterprise to believe that its
  echoes are over with the reign of emancipation.
  Moreover, I am a direct descendant of Prospero
  worshipping in the same temple of endeavour,
  using his legacy of language -- not to curse our
  meeting -- but to push it further, reminding the
  descendants of both sides that what's done is
  done, and can only be seen as a soil from which
  other gifts, or the same gift endowed with
  different meanings, may grow towards a future
  which is colonised by our acts in this moment,
  but which must always remain open." 

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Some Caribbean novelists

• Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1932-)
• The Mystic Masseur (1957)
• Miguel Street (1959)
• A House for Mr Biswas (1961)
• The Mimic Men (1967)
• Guerillas (1975)
• The Enigma of Arrival (1987)
• A Way in the World (1994)
• Half a Life (2001)

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Some Indian novelists

• Anita Desai (1937-)
• Fire on the Mountain (1977)
• In Custody (1981)
• Baumgartners Bombay (1988)
• Fasting, Feasting (1999)

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Some Indian novelists

• Amitav Gosh (1957-)
• The Shadow Lines (1988)
• In an Antique Land (1992)
• The Calcutta Chromosome (1995)
• The Glass Palace (2001)
• Vikram Seth (1952-)
• The Golden Gate (1986)
• A Suitable Boy (1993)
• An Equal Music (1999)

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• Salman Rushdie (1947-)
• Midnights Children (1981)
• Shame (1983)
• The Satanic Verses (1988)
• The Moors Last Sigh (1995)
• The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
• Shalimar the Clown (2005)
• The Enchantress of Florence (2008)