Postcolonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the CanonIn recent years works such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, J.M. Coetzee's Foe and Peter Carey's Jack Maggs, which 'write back' to classic English texts, have attracted considerable attention as offering a paradigm for the relationship between post-colonial writing and the 'canon'. Thieme's study provides a broad overview of such writing, focusing both on responses to texts that have frequently been associated with the colonial project or the construction of 'race' (The Tempest, Robinson Crusoe, Heart of Darkness and Othello) and texts where the interaction between culture and imperialism is slightly less overt (Great Expectations, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights). The post-colonial con-texts examined are located within their particular social and cultural backgrounds with emphasis on the different forms their responses to their pre-texts take and the extent to which they create their own discursive space. Using Edward Said's models of filiative relationships and affiliative identifications, the book argues that 'writing back' is seldom adversarial, rather that it operates along a continuum between complicity and oppositionality that dismantles hierarchical positioning. It also suggests that post-colonial appropriations of canonical pre-texts frequently generate re-readings of their 'originals'. It concludes by considering the implications of this argument for discussions of identity politics and literary genealogies more generally. Authors examined include Chinua Achebe, Margaret Atwood, Kamau Brathwaite, Peter Carey, J.M. Coetzee, Robertson Davies, Wilson Harris, Elizabeth Jolley, Robert Kroetsch, George Lamming, Margaret Laurence, Pauline Melville, V.S. Naipaul, Caryl Phillips, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Jean Rhys, Salman Rushdie, Djanet Sears, Sam Selvon, Olive Senior, Jane Urquhart and Derek Walcott. |
Contents
1 | |
15 | |
protean Crusoes exiled Fridays | 53 |
Caribbean and Canadian responses to the Brontės | 72 |
5 Turned upside down? Dickenss Australia and Peter Careys Jack Maggs | 102 |
restaging The Tempest | 127 |
a different Othello music | 155 |
narrative agency in Pauline Melvilles The Ventriloquists Tale | 170 |
186 | |
196 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Achebe Achebe's African Amerindian Anna appears aspects Australian Badlands becomes binary Brontėan Caliban Canadian Caribbean central characters colonial Conrad constructed contemporary counter-discursive cultural Defoe's Derek Dickens Dickens's discourse Emily Brontė England English canon European exile father fiction figure Friday gender Gothic Harlem Duet Harris Heart of Darkness Heathcliff identity imperialism Indian intertexts island Jack Maggs Jane Eyre journey Kroetsch's Kurtz Lamming Lamming's literary locate Magwitch male Marlow Mimic Men Miranda mode Moses Naipaul narrative narrator nineteenth-century novel novelist novella obvious offers Othello parallels particularly Peacock play poem possibility postcolonial con-texts postcolonial texts postcolonial writers pre-text Prospero protagonist quest racial readers reading references relation relationship represents response Rhys Rhys's Robinson Crusoe role romantic seems Shakespeare's social society stereotyping story suggests Teeton tell Tempest text's Tobias Tobias's V. S. Naipaul Ventriloquist's Tale Walcott Water with Berries Wide Sargasso Sea writing back Wuthering Heights
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Page 15 - It was unearthly, and the men were - No, they were not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it - this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the thought of their humanity like yours - the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar.