The Cambridge History of the English Novel

The Cambridge History of the English Novel
Author: Robert L. Caserio
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1006
Release: 2012-01-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1316175103

The Cambridge History of the English Novel chronicles an ever-changing and developing body of fiction across three centuries. An interwoven narrative of the novel's progress unfolds in more than fifty chapters, charting continuities and innovations of structure, tracing lines of influence in terms of themes and techniques, and showing how greater and lesser authors shape the genre. Pushing beyond the usual period-centered boundaries, the History's emphasis on form reveals the range and depth the novel has achieved in English. This book will be indispensable for research libraries and scholars, but is accessibly written for students. Authoritative, bold and clear, the History raises multiple useful questions for future visions of the invention and re-invention of the novel.

Narratives of Obeah in West Indian Literature

Narratives of Obeah in West Indian Literature
Author: Janelle Rodriques
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2019-04-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0429998651

This book explores representations of Obeah – a name used in the English/Creole-speaking Caribbean to describe various African-derived, syncretic Caribbean religious practices – across a range of prose fictions published in the twentieth century by West Indian authors. In the Caribbean and its diasporas, Obeah often manifests in the casting of spells, the administration of baths and potions of various oils, herbs, roots and powders, and sometimes spirit possession, for the purposes of protection, revenge, health and well-being. In most Caribbean territories, the practice – and practices that may resemble it – remains illegal. Narratives of Obeah in West Indian Literature analyses fiction that employs Obeah as a marker of the Black ‘folk’ aesthetics that are now constitutive of West Indian literary and cultural production, either in resistance to colonial ideology or in service of the same. These texts foreground Obeah as a social and cultural logic both integral to and troublesome within the creation of such a thing as ‘West Indian’ literature and culture, at once a product of and a foil to Caribbean plantation societies. This book explores the presentation of Obeah as an ‘unruly’ narrative subject, one that not only subverts but signifies a lasting ‘Afro-folk’ sensibility within colonial and ‘postcolonial’ writing of the West Indies. Narratives of Obeah in West Indian Literature will be of interest to scholars and students of Caribbean Literature, Diaspora Studies, and African and Caribbean religious studies; it will also contribute to dialogues of spirituality in the wider Black Atlantic.

Making West Indian Literature

Making West Indian Literature
Author: Mervyn Morris
Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2005
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9766371741

"West Indian Literature, as a body of work, is a fairly recent phenomenon; and literary criticism has not always acknowledged the diversity of approaches to writing effectively. In Making West Indian Literature poet and critic Mervyn Morris explores examples of West Indian creativity shaping a range of responses to experience, which often includes colonial traces. Appreciating various kinds of making and a number of West Indian makers, these engaging essays and interviews display a recurrent interest in the processes of composition. Some of the prices highlight writer-performers who have not often been examined. This very readable book, often personal in tone, makes a distinctive contribution to the knowledge and understanding of West Indian Literature. "

Imagining London

Imagining London
Author: John Clement Ball
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802044969

Imagining London examines representations of the English metropolis in Canadian, West Indian, South Asian, and second-generation 'black British' novels written in the last half of the twentieth century.

Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1920–1970: Volume 2

Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1920–1970: Volume 2
Author: Raphael Dalleo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 749
Release: 2021-01-14
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108851436

The years between the 1920s and 1970s are key for the development of Caribbean literature, producing the founding canonical literary texts of the Anglophone Caribbean. This volume features essays by major scholars as well as emerging voices revisiting important moments from that era to open up new perspectives. Caribbean contributions to the Harlem Renaissance, to the Windrush generation publishing in England after World War II, and to the regional reverberations of the Cuban Revolution all feature prominently in this story. At the same time, we uncover lesser known stories of writers publishing in regional newspapers and journals, of pioneering women writers, and of exchanges with Canada and the African continent. From major writers like Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Jean Rhys to recently recuperated figures like Eric Walrond, Una Marson, Sylvia Wynter, and Ismith Khan, this volume sets a course for the future study of Caribbean literature.

Diasporic Literature and Theory - Where Now?

Diasporic Literature and Theory - Where Now?
Author: Mark Shackleton
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2009-03-26
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1443807273

The theoretical innovations of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, James Clifford and others have in recent years vitalized postcolonial and diaspora studies, challenging ways in which we understand ‘culture’ and developing new ways of thinking beyond the confines of the nation state. The articles in this volume look at recent developments in diasporic literature and theory, alluding to the work of seminal diaspora theoreticians, but also interrogating such thinkers in the light of recent cultural production (including literature, film and visual art) as well as recent world events. The articles are organized in pairs, offering alternative perspectives on crucial aspects of diaspora theory today: Celebration or Melancholy?; Gender Biases and the Canon of Diasporic Literature; Diasporas of Violence and Terror; Time, Place and Diasporic “Home”; and Border Crossings. A number of the articles are illustrated by discussions of particular authors, such as Caryl Phillips, Salman Rushdie, and Michael Ondaatje, and the range of reference found in this volume covers writing from many parts of the world including contemporary Chicana visual art, Asian diaspora writers, and Black British, Afro-Caribbean, Native North American, and African writing.

Wholeness and Home in West Indian Literature

Wholeness and Home in West Indian Literature
Author: Daizal R. Samad
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2023-08-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1398463795

WHOLENESS AND HOME IN WEST INDIAN LITERATURE is an invaluable resource for everyone who has an interest in West Indian literature or Culture, West Indian Society or History, Ethnic Tensions, and Psychic Heterogeneity. It is especially useful for university and secondary school students and teachers who teach or need to learn about writers from the West Indies. It offers unique critical insights into the works of globally renowned writers who hail from the Caribbean: V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming, Wilson Harris, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, John Hearn, Jean Rhys, and Derek Walcott. WHOLENESS AND HOME is important reading for any student of ethnic relations. The book focuses on the possibilities of a culture that had its very beginnings in genocide and in the forced or fraudulent fetching of human beings from many other places. These people were pitted against each other to ensure division and assure plantation profitability. This book examines how major West Indian writers capture this initial ethnic antagonism that now infects much of the world. WHOLENESS AND HOME also insists on the futility of racism and bigotry by pointing to the enormous potential for social harmony. At the very least, Samad and Harripersaud offer excellent examples of essay writing for teachers and students, especially those at the university and college levels.

The Fiction of South Asians in North America and the Caribbean

The Fiction of South Asians in North America and the Caribbean
Author: Mitali P. Wong
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2010-06-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780786482245

This study establishes connections between the themes and methodologies of writers within the South Asian diaspora in the New World, and serves both serious analysts as well as beginning readers of South Asian fiction. It is an impartial study that analyzes the stylistic excellence of South Asian fiction and the clearly emergent motifs of the writers, recognizing the value of the interplay of cultural differences and the need for resolution of those differences. The book begins with a discussion of the works of Indo-Caribbean novelists Samuel Selvon and V.S. Naipaul, author of A House for Mr. Biswas and The Enigma of Arrival, thereby establishing parallels between the immigration patterns of the South Asian diaspora who first emigrated to the Caribbean long before significant numbers of South Asians came to the United States. Next, the fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (Heat and Dust), the non-fictional narratives of Ved Mehta (Face to Face), and the satire and social criticism of Bharati Mukherjee (Wife) and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Sister of My Heart) are discussed. New literary voices such as those of Bapsi Sidhwa (An American Brat), Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, whose characters, plots and themes deal with universal human experiences, Akhil Sharma, Manil Suri and Samrat Upadhyay are studied for the new directions and new methods they offer. A sub-genre of young adult fiction is discovered in the novels of Dhan Gopal Mukerji, such as in his Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon, and more recently in the works of Mitali Perkins and Indi Rana. Recent expatriate novelists from South Asia such as Anita Desai, Amitav Chosh, Vikram Chandra and the American editions of Vikram Seth's novels are appraised together with contemporary Indo-Canadian novelists and Indo-Caribbean novelists resident in Canada.

West Indian Intellectuals in Britain

West Indian Intellectuals in Britain
Author: Bill Schwarz
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780719064753

Caribbean migration to Britain brought many new things--new music, new foods, new styles. It brought new ways of thinking too. This lively, innovative book explores the intellectual ideas which the West Indians brought with them to Britain. It shows that for more than a century West Indians living in Britain developed a dazzling intellectual critique of the codes of Imperial Britain. This is the first comprehensive discussion of the major Caribbean thinkers who came to live in twentieth-century Britain. Chapters discuss the influence of, amongst others, C.L.R. James, Una Marson, George Lamming, Jean Rhys, Claude McKay and V.S. Naipaul.