Post-War British Literature and the "End of Empire"

Post-War British Literature and the
Author: Matthew Whittle
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2017-01-03
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137540141

This book examines literary texts by British colonial servant and settler writers, including Anthony Burgess, Graham Greene, William Golding, and Alan Sillitoe, who depicted the impact of decolonization in the newly independent colonies and at home in Britain. The end of the British Empire was one of the most significant and transformative events in twentieth-century history, marking the beginning of a new world order and having an indelible impact on British culture and society. Literary responses to this moment by those from within Britain offer an enlightening (and often overlooked) exploration of the influence of decolonization on received notions of “race” and class, while also prefiguring conceptions of multiculturalism. As Matthew Whittle argues in this sweeping study, these works not only view decolonization within its global context (alongside the aftermath of the Second World War, the rise of America, and mass immigration) but often propose a solution to imperial decline through cultural renewal.

British Fiction and Cross-Cultural Encounters

British Fiction and Cross-Cultural Encounters
Author: C. Snyder
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2016-09-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137039477

This book reveals that British modernists read widely in anthropology and ethnography, sometimes conducted their own 'fieldwork', and thematized the challenges of cultural encounters in their fiction, letters, and essays.

Ethnographic Narratives as World Literature

Ethnographic Narratives as World Literature
Author: Lucio De Capitani
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2023-10-02
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 303138704X

This book links world-literary studies with anthropology and ethnography. It shows how ethnographic narratives can represent a compelling point of departure for world-literary explorations. The volume compares the travel writing and fiction of Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling as colonial ethnographic narratives; the militant writings of Carlo Levi and Mahasweta Devi; and the travelogues and ethnographic fiction of Amitav Ghosh and the literary journalism of Frank Westerman. Each of these readings focuses on a set of social, political and historical circumstances and relies on a dialogue with anthropological theory and history. This book demonstrates how imperialism, colonialism, capitalism and ecology are interdependent, and contributes to methodological debates within both anthropology and world-literary studies.

Pilgrimages and Spiritual Quests in Japan

Pilgrimages and Spiritual Quests in Japan
Author: Peter Ackermann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2007-03-06
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1134350465

In a variety of interesting dimensions in both historical and contemporary Japanese culture, this exciting new book examines pilgrimages in Japan, including the meanings of travel, transformation, and the discovery of identity through encounters with the sacred.

Re-Creating Anthropology

Re-Creating Anthropology
Author: David N. Gellner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2022-04-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000568970

This book makes a notable contribution to discussions of what anthropology is and should be in the twenty-first century through a reconsideration, from diverse sub-disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, of the interactions between sociality, matter, and the imagination. It explores the imagination in its social contexts, how it is put to work, and how, in its embodied and material forms, it works in practice. The chapters provide detailed case studies, including film-making in Egypt; spirit-possession/exorcism in Italy; Theosophy and the production of knowledge about UFOs; the role of mistakes or glitches in public performances; humans’ varying relationships to the environment; post-coloniality, time, and crisis in anthropology; and artistic creativity.

Between Cultures

Between Cultures
Author: Jerrold Seigel
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0812247612

Masquerade, engagement, and skepticism : Richard Burton -- Commitment and loss : T. E. Lawrence -- The Islamic Catholicism of Louis Massignon -- Independence and ambivalence : Chinua Achebe and two African contemporaries -- Reflection, mystery, and violence : Orhan Pamuk

Social Anthropology and Language

Social Anthropology and Language
Author: Edwin Ardener
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136539417

Providing a critical framework for the consideration of the relationship between modern social anthropology and linguistics, this volume covers topics such as classification, symbolism, and structuralism. The relevance of the works of Saussure, Lévi-Strauss and Chomsky is considered. There are two case-studies: the first outlines a 'social history' of the succession of pidgins that are documented on the West African coast, ending with Pidgin English. The second analyzes the status of three language varieties used in a 'trilingual' community in the Carnian Alps. Originally published in 1971.

Sciences of Modernism

Sciences of Modernism
Author: Paul Peppis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2014-02-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 110704264X

Sciences of Modernism charts the numerous collaborations and competitions occurring between early modernist literature and early twentieth-century science.

The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century English Novel

The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century English Novel
Author: Robert L. Caserio
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2009-04-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1139828339

The twentieth-century English novel encompasses a vast body of work, and one of the most important and most widely read genres of literature. Balancing close readings of particular novels with a comprehensive survey of the last century of published fiction, this Companion introduces readers to more than a hundred major and minor novelists. It demonstrates continuities in novel-writing that bridge the century's pre- and post-War halves and presents leading critical ideas about English fiction's themes and forms. The essays examine the endurance of modernist style throughout the century, the role of nationality and the contested role of the English language in all its forms, and the relationships between realism and other fictional modes: fantasy, romance, science fiction. Students, scholars and readers will find this Companion an indispensable guide to the history of the English novel.