Postcolonial Literature: The British Empire Enchained

World Literature in English, from India, Africa, the Carribean and the U.K.

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Course Description: Postcolonial literature describes literature by authors from non-European, non-U.S. countries once subject to British or European colonial rule. This course looks at how, by "enchaining" the peoples and cultures of nations once under its rule and "enchaining" itself to these nations in a common history of Empire, England and its literature both shaped and were shaped by these relations.

We will begin with late Victorian examples of literature explicitly or implicitly involving British colonial relationships, written from a British point of view, then focus on contemporary fiction written in English from areas once but no longer under British colonial rule: The Indian Subcontinent, Nigeria and South Africa, the Carribean, and the U.K. itself. We will examine how colonial literature imagines the "other" and how those representations relate to material realities, as well as how the "postcolonial" literature by writers from the once-colonized nations resist and re-imagine their identities and their relationships to colonial history. This literature is historically, politically, and culturally engaged, as well as culturally, thematically and stylistically diverse – varyingly marked by adventure, romance, tragedy, humor, social realism, and experimental narrative forms. A number of the novels on this syllabus have won or were short-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize.

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Major Readings:

Rudyard Kipling, _Kim_

Salmon Rushdie, _Shame_

Anita Desai, _Clear Light of Day_

Buchi Emechita, _The Joys of Motherhood_

Caryl Phillips, _Crossing the River_

J.M. Coetzee, _Disgrace_

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Useful Web Links:

George Landow's Postimperial and Postcolonial Web

Other Colonial and Postcolonial links

Page last updated on July 7, 2001

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