The Language Of Postcolonial Literatures

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.

This collection gathers together a stellar group of contributors offering innovative perspectives on the issues of language and translation in postcolonial studies. In a world where bi- and multilingualism have become quite normal, this volume identifies a gap in the critical apparatus in postcolonial studies in order to read cultural texts emerging out of multilingual contexts. The role of translation and an awareness of the multilingual spaces in which many postcolonial texts are written are fundamental issues with which postcolonial studies needs to engage in a far more concerted fashion. The essays in this book by contributors from Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Cyprus, Malaysia, Quebec, Ireland, France, Scotland, the US, and Italy outline a pragmatics of language and translation of value to scholars with an interest in the changing forms of literature and culture in our times. Essay topics include: multilingual textual politics; the benefits of multilingual education in postcolonial countries; the language of gender and sexuality in postcolonial literatures; translational cities; postcolonial calligraphy; globalization and the new digital ecology.

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.

This collection gathers together a stellar group of contributors offering innovative perspectives on the issues of language and translation in postcolonial studies. In a world where bi- and multilingualism have become quite normal, this volume identifies a gap in the critical apparatus in postcolonial studies in order to read cultural texts emerging out of multilingual contexts. The role of translation and an awareness of the multilingual spaces in which many postcolonial texts are written are fundamental issues with which postcolonial studies needs to engage in a far more concerted fashion. The essays in this book by contributors from Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Cyprus, Malaysia, Quebec, Ireland, France, Scotland, the US, and Italy outline a pragmatics of language and translation of value to scholars with an interest in the changing forms of literature and culture in our times. Essay topics include: multilingual textual politics; the benefits of multilingual education in postcolonial countries; the language of gender and sexuality in postcolonial literatures; translational cities; postcolonial calligraphy; globalization and the new digital ecology.

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.

This book examines works from twelve authors from colonized cultures who write in English: William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Maxine Hong Kinston, Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Alic Walker, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, Louise Erdrich, and Leslie Marmon Silko. The book fins connection among these writers and their respective works. Patsy Daniels argues that the thinkers and writers of colonized culture must learn the language of the colonizer and take it back to their own community thus making themselves translators who occupy a manufactured, hybdid space between two cultures.

In Shakespeare’s Tempest, Caliban says to Miranda and Prospero: "...you taught me language, and my profit on’t Is, I know how to curse. " With this statement, he gives voice to an issue that lies at the centre of post-colonial studies. Can Caliban own Prospero’s language? Can he use it to do more than curse? Caliban’s Voice examines the ways in which post-colonial literatures have transformed English to redefine what we understand to be ‘English Literature’. It investigates the importance of language learning in the imperial mission, the function of language in ideas of race and place, the link between language and identity, the move from orature to literature and the significance of translation. By demonstrating the dialogue that occurs between writers and readers in literature, Bill Ashcroft argues that cultural identity is not locked up in language, but that language, even a dominant colonial language, can be transformed to convey the realities of many different cultures. Using the figure of Caliban, Ashcroft weaves a consistent and resonant thread through his discussion of the post-colonial experience of life in the English language, and the power of its transformation into new and creative forms.

This book presents an introduction to key issues involved in the study of postcolonial literature including diasporas, postcolonial nationalisms, indigenous identities and politics and globalization. This book also contains a chapter on afterlives and adaptations that explores a range of wider cultural texts including film, non-fiction and art.