Download or read book Coterminous Worlds written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present collection of essays endeavours to furnish informed responses to central questions posed by the editors: Is the fact that the marvellous coexists with the factual and never resolves itself into the supernatural an indication that the whole literary project of 'magical realism' is an instrumental and representational form which can be regarded as particularly suitable for reconciling dichotomies and oppositions otherwise experienced as intolerable? Was 'magical realism' an explosive process in cultural dynamics, taking place at intersections of heterogeneous cultures most favourable to the efflorescence of this type of literature? The authors of the various essays - on Patrick White and David Malouf, Ben Okri, Syl Cheney-Coker, Robert Kroetsch, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Jack Hodgins, Salman Rushdie, Janet Frame, Wilson Harris and others - provide a dynamic focus on the reality at stake beneath the surface representations of 'magical realism' in post-colonial literatures.
Download or read book The Unharnessed World written by Cindy Gabrielle and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-06-18 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though New Zealand author Janet Frame (1924–2004) lived at a time of growing dissatisfaction with European cultural models, and though her (auto-)biography, fiction and letters all testify to the fact that a direct encounter between herself and Buddhism occurred, her work has, so far, never been examined from the vantage point of its indebtedness to Buddhism. It is of the utmost significance, however, that a Buddhist navigation of Frame’s texts should shed fresh light on large segments of the Framean corpus which have tended to remain obdurately mysterious. This includes passages centering on such themes as the existence of a non-dual world or a character’s sudden embrace of a non-ego-like self. Of equal significance is the conclusion one then draws that this unharnessed world which human beings are often unable to embrace has always been right under their nose, for, whenever the aspect of the intellect that filters perceptions into mutually excluding categories fails to function, he or she finds a place of subjective arrival in, and sees, this supposedly unknowable ‘beyond’. Thus, possibly against the grain of mainstream criticism, this study argues that Janet Frame constantly seeks ways through which the infinite and the Other can be approached, though not corrupted, by the perceiving self, and that she found in the Buddhist epistemology a pathway towards evoking such alterity.
Download or read book De Coca colonization written by Steven Flusty and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze written by Lorna Burns and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-07-12 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Caribbean Writing and Deleuze maps a new intellectual and literary history of postcolonial Caribbean writing and thought spanning from the 1930s surrealist movement to the present, crossing the region's language blocs, and focused on the interconnected principles of creativity and commemoration. Exploring the work of René Ménil, Édouard Glissant, Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Pauline Melville, Robert Antoni and Nalo Hopkinson, this study reveals the explicit and implicit engagement with Deleuzian thought at work in contemporary Caribbean writing. Uniting for the first time two major schools of contemporary thought - postcolonialism and post-continental philosophy - this study establishes a new and innovative critical discourse for Caribbean studies and postcolonial theory beyond the oppositional dialectic of colonizer and colonized. Drawing from Deleuze's writings on Bergson, Nietzsche and Spinoza, this study interrogates the postcolonial tropes of newness, becoming, relationality and a philosophical concept of immanence that lie at the heart of a little-observed dialogue between contemporary Caribbean writers and Deleuze.
Download or read book Self Nation Text in Salman Rushdie s Midnight s Children written by Neil ten Kortenaar and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2004-01-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many non-Indian readers find the historical and cultural references in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children demanding. In his close reading of the novel, Neil ten Kortenaar offers post-colonial literary strategies for understanding Midnight's Children that also challenge some of the prevailing interpretations of the novel. Using hybridity, mimicry, national allegory, and cosmopolitanism, all key critical concepts of postcolonial theory, ten Kortenaar reads Midnight's Children as an allegory of history, as a Bildungsroman and psychological study of a burgeoning national consciousness, and as a representation of the nation. He shows that the hybridity of Rushdie's fictional India is not created by different elements forming a whole but by the relationship among them. Self, Nation, Text in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children also makes an original argument about how nation-states are imagined and how national consciousness is formed in the citizen. The protagonist, Saleem Sinai, heroically identifies himself with the state, but this identification is beaten out of him until, in the end, he sees himself as the Common Man at the mercy of the state. Ten Kortenaar reveals Rushdie's India to be more self-conscious than many communal identities based on language: it is an India haunted by a dark twin called Pakistan; a nation in the way England is a nation but imagined against England. Mistrusting the openness of Tagore's Hindu India, it is both cosmopolitan and a specific subjective location.
Download or read book Postcolonial Literature An Introduction written by Pramod K. Nayar and published by Pearson Education India. This book was released on with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Postcolonial writing originating from Africa, Asia, and South America in the mid-twentieth century has constantly examined, negotiated with, and reacted to the overarching experience of colonial subjugation. Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction, with its seven thematically organized chapters, lucidly elucidates complex concepts and formulations of postcolonial literature and theory and critically analyses their various dimensions with relevant examples from contemporary postcolonial writing. The book would also appeal to the general reader aiming to gain a thorough understanding of the fundamental themes and discourses of postcolonial literature.
Download or read book Magical Realism and Cosmopolitanism written by K. Sasser and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magical Realism and Cosmopolitanism details a variety of functionalities of the mode of magical realism, focusing on its capacity to construct sociological representations of belonging. This usage is traced closely in the novels of Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie, Cristina García, and Helen Oyeyemi.
Download or read book Memories of the Classical Underworld in Irish and Caribbean Literature written by Madeleine Scherer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical Memories is an intervention into the field of adaptation studies, taking the example of classical reception to show that adaptation is a process that can be driven by and produce intertextual memories. I see ‘classical memories’ as a memory-driven type of adaptation that draws on and reproduces schematic and otherwise de-contextualised conceptions of antiquity and its cultural ‘exports’ in, broadly speaking, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These memory-driven adaptations differ, often in significant ways, from more traditional adaptations that seek to either continue or deconstruct a long-running tradition that can be traced back to antiquity as well as its canonical points of reception in later ages. When investigating such a popular and widespread set of narratives, characters, and images like those that remain of Graeco-Roman antiquity, terms like ‘adaptation’ and ‘reception’ could and should be nuanced further to allow us to understand the complex interactions between modern works and classical antiquity in more detail, particularly when it pertains to postcolonial or post-digital classical reception. In Classical Memories, I propose that understanding certain types of adaptations as intertextual memories allows us to do just that.
Download or read book Ordinary Enchantments written by Wendy B. Faris and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ordinary Enchantments investigates magical realism as the most important trend in contemporary international fiction, defines its characteristics and narrative techniques, and proposes a new theory to explain its significance. In the most comprehensive critical treatment of this literary mode to date, Wendy B. Faris discusses a rich array of examples from magical realist novels around the world, including the work not only of Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but also of authors like Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass, Toni Morrison, and Ben Okri. Faris argues that by combining realistic representation with fantastic elements so that the marvelous seems to grow organically out of the ordinary, magical realism destabilizes the dominant form of realism based on empirical definitions of reality, gives it visionary power, and thus constitutes what might be called a "remystification" of narrative in the West. Noting the radical narrative heterogeneity of magical realism, the author compares its cultural role to that of traditional shamanic performance, which joins the worlds of daily life and that of the spirits. Because of that capacity to bridge different worlds, magical realism has served as an effective decolonizing agent, providing the ground for marginal voices, submerged traditions, and emergent literatures to develop and create masterpieces. At the same time, this process is not limited to postcolonial situations but constitutes a global trend that replenishes realism from within. In addition to describing what many consider to be the progressive cultural work of magical realism, Faris also confronts the recent accusation that magical realism and its study as a global phenomenon can be seen as a form of commodification and an imposition of cultural homogeneity. And finally, drawing on the narrative innovations and cultural scenarios that magical realism enacts, she extends those principles toward issues of gender and the possibility of a female element within magical realism.
Download or read book The Postsecular Restoration and the Making of Literary Conservatism written by Corrinne Harol and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-22 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Corrinne Harol reveals how secularization catalysed conservative writers to respond and thereby contribute impactfully to literary history.
Download or read book Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific written by Susan Y. Najita and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-22 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific, Susan Y. Najita proposes that the traumatic history of contact and colonization has become a crucial means by which indigenous peoples of Oceania are reclaiming their cultures, languages, ways of knowing, and political independence. In particular, she examines how contemporary writers from Hawai‘i, Samoa, and Aotearoa/New Zealand remember, re-tell, and deploy this violent history in their work. As Pacific peoples negotiate their paths towards sovereignty and chart their postcolonial futures, these writers play an invaluable role in invoking and commenting upon the various uses of the histories of colonial resistance, allowing themselves and their readers to imagine new futures by exorcising the past. Decolonizing Cultures in the Pacific is a valuable addition to the fields of Pacific and Postcolonial Studies and also contributes to struggles for cultural decolonization in Oceania: contemporary writers’ critical engagement with colonialism and indigenous culture, Najita argues, provides a powerful tool for navigating a decolonized future.
Download or read book Imagining Religious Toleration written by Alison Conway and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Formerly a site of study reserved for intellectual historians and political philosophers, scholarship on religious toleration, from the perspective of literary scholars, is fairly limited. Largely ignored and understudied techniques employed by writers to influence cultural understandings of tolerance are rich for exploration. In investigating texts ranging from early modern to Romantic, Alison Conway, David Alvarez, and their contributors shed light on what literature can say about toleration, and how it can produce and manage feelings of tolerance and intolerance. Beginning with an overview of the historical debates surrounding the terms "toleration" and "tolerance," this book moves on to discuss the specific contributions that literature and literary modes have made to cultural history, studying the literary techniques that philosophers, theologians, and political theorists used to frame the questions central to the idea and practice of religious toleration. Tracing the rhetoric employed by a wide range of authors, the contributors delve into topics such as conversion as an instrument of power in Shakespeare; the relationship between religious toleration and the rise of Enlightenment satire; and the ways in which writing can act as a call for tolerance.
Download or read book Indian Writings in English written by Manmohan K. Bhatnagar and published by Atlantic Publishers & Dist. This book was released on 2000 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian English Literature In Its Very Tone And Tenor Presents A Unique Blend Of Tradition And Experiment In Both Its Matter And Manner. The Present-Day Indian English Literatteur Is Firmly Grounded In A Philosophico-Cultural Sensibility Tracing Its Uninterrupted Links With The Very Dawn Of Civilisation In This Part Of The World. And Yet The Product Is Not An Aberration In Any Way In The Modern Context. This Imbues Indian Writings In English With A Distinctive Aesthetic Flavour, To The Connoisseurs' Obvious Delight.The Present Volume Incorporates The Painstaking Application Of Diverse Critical Methodologies To Analyse Indian English Literature Poetry, Drama, Novels And Prose From This Broad Perspective. Comprising Close Analyses Of The Works Of Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, R.K. Narayan, Bhabani Bhattacharya, Anita Desai, Arun Joshi, Kamala Das And Nissim Ezekiel, The Collection Offers Fresh Critical Insights, Opening Possibilities Of Further Exploration Along The Avenues Here Suggested.A Fresh Look At Established Works, Highlighting Aspects Hitherto Unexplored.An Indispensable Source-Book For Students, Researchers And Teachers Of Indian English And Commonwealth Literature.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Contemporary Writers and Their Works written by Geoff Hamilton and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive overview of the best writers and works of the current English-speaking literary world.
Download or read book A Postmodern Nationalist written by Phillip Rothwell and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first book in the English language devoted to the study of the work of Mozambique's leading contemporary author, Mia Couto. Couto's fiction is riddled by a central paradox - it forges a distinct postmodern national identity for a country historically plagued by repeated and detrimental interference from abroad. Phillip Rothwell argues that Couto is a writer who eschews and reinforces the national frontier. In fact, Couto produces a cultural phenomenon that is markedly Mozambican by corrupting aspects of the European legacy Portugal left on the African continent, fusing this distortion with a corrupted version of African heritage, and demarcating literary boundaries through fluidity." "The book details Couto's life and literary trajectory, and interprets essential aspects of Mozambican political and cultural history before undertaking a range of analyses of his work. The postmodern relativization of the concept of a unitary truth furnishes the springboard for an interrogation of what "truth" has meant to Mozambique as exemplified in Couto's texts. The paradoxes inherent in the politics of orthography are scrutinized in Couto's universe to illustrate the aporia prevalent in an atavistic reclaiming of a pre-Portuguese system of writing. Rothwell then engages with the moral meaning of orality and literacy in the tradition Couto both defies and defines, to demonstrate Couto's simultaneous disavowal of misographic and graphophile epistemologies. The manners in which Couto breaches the frontier between the conscious and unconscious realms and blurs gender distinctions are read alongside traditional delineations in order to understand the extent to which Couto's message is radically political. Rothwell concludes with a reading of one of Couto's most potent works in which, through an empowering attack on the United Nations' invasion of Mozambique, Couto enjoins his fellow nationals to begin to resist the postmodern age." "Couto's ambivalent use of the tropes of postmodernism are discussed throughout the book, particularly the way in which it has evolved into a political agenda that is fiercely Mozambican. Rothwell demonstrates Couto's reevaluation of Grand Narratives and shows how, in the case of the Mozambican culture of today, postmodernism has become the only Grand Narrative left worth critiquing." "Rothwell explores a broad cross-section of Couto's literary output, from his early short stories to his more recent novels. He places these within the context of a Mozambican and wider lusophone cultural backdrop, providing essential reading and source of reference for all interested in contemporary Portuguese, African, and world literatures."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book The Palgrave Handbook of Magical Realism in the Twenty First Century written by Richard Perez and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-30 with total page 651 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Palgrave Handbook of Magical Realism in the Twenty-First Century examines magical realism in literatures from around the globe. Featuring twenty-seven essays written by leading scholars, this anthology argues that literary expressions of magical realism proliferate globally in the twenty-first century due to travel and migrations, the shrinking of time and space, and the growing encroachment of human life on nature. In this global context, magical realism addresses twenty-first-century politics, aesthetics, identity, and social/national formations where contact between and within cultures has exponentially increased, altering how communities and nations imagine themselves. This text assembles a group of critics throughout the world—the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia—who employ multiple theoretical approaches to examine the different ways magical realism in literature has transitioned to a global practice; thus, signaling a new stage in the history and development of the genre.
Download or read book Studies in Indian Writing in English written by Mittapalli Rajeshwar and published by Atlantic Publishers & Distri. This book was released on 2000 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During The Seventy Years Of Its Effective History Indian Writing In English Crossed Many Miles Stones And Has Come To Be Finally Accepted As A Major Literature Of The World. Having Won Almost Every Important Literary Prize In The Recent Few Years, Iwe Has Become Immensely Popular With The Common International Readers And Critics Alike. If Its Being Prescribed For Study In Universities Across The World Is Any Indication, The Place Of Iwe In The Canon Is Secure Forever.This Anthology Of Critical Articles Attempts To Evaluate Some Of The Major Indian Poets And Novelists And Their Influential Works From Refreshingly New Perspectives Historical, Socio-Economic, Existential, Mythological, Philosophical-Religious And Environmental.The Writers Studied Here Include Anand, Narayan, Raja Rao, Malgonkar, Bhattacharya, Joshi, Desai, Markandaya, Sahgal, Ezekiel And Ramanujan. An Interesting Addition To This Volume Are A Couple Of Articles On The Diaspora Writers Such Rohinton Mistry And The South African Indian Poets And Novelists.It Is Hoped That This Book Will Prove Itself Highly Useful To All Who Are Seriously Interested In Indian Writing In English.
