Studies in Commonwealth Literature (Hardcover)  | Released: 2003

Commonwealth Literature today stands for literature(s) in English written in the commonwealth countries outside the Anglo-American tradition. What is common between the diverse members of the commonwealth in spite of their different calendars of Independence and ethnological, cultural, political as also topographical set-ups is that all these countries shared the common colonial experience. So, from India to Nigeria, Canada to Kenya, Australia to Pakistan we can discern the varying patterns of a common human experience and emergence of cultural nationalism leading to an emphasis on their distinctiveness in literary heritage and assertion of cultural identity. Commonwealth Literature thus presents a rich variety of aesthetic and cultural experience.
The essays collected in this volume spanning different countries and periods try to offer a taste of this interesting variety. The range covered here stretches from West African drama to South African fiction, Australian and Caribbean literature to that of Indian diaspora and South Asian poetry of the SAARC countries. Discussions on Indian literature cover the varied areas from devotional mysticism to realistic social satire, myth-oriented novel to feminism, dialogism and reassessment of postcolonial theories.
The authors focused in this discussion promises a colourful spectrum; they include Wole Soyinka, Ahmed Essop, Salman Rushdie, David Malouf, Wilson Harris, Patrick White, Rohinton Mistry, G.V. Desani, Aurobindo, Manohar Magonkar, R.K. Narayan, Gurcharan Das, Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kamala Das, K.V. Venkataramani, Margaret Craven, along with a host of SAARC poets.
The volume will be useful for the students and scholars of Commonwealth Literature, and will also prove interesting to the common reader.
Table of Contents: 1. Colonial Conflict in Things Fall Apart
�Basavaraj Naikar
2. Gabriel Okara�s The Voice: A Novel about Awakening
�Mallikarjun Patil
3. Farida Karodia�s Other Secrets
�Rajendra Chetty
4. On the Fringe of Africa: Ahmed Essop
�Rajendra Chetty
5. Origin, Origins, Originality: Salman Rushdie�s East, West, David Malouf�s Antipodes and
Wilson Harris�s The Womb of Space
�Elsa Linguanti
6. Tree of Man: Symphonic Structure
�Kalpana Purohit
7. Ecology and Identity Crisis in Rohinton Mistry�s Fiction
�C.C. Mishra
8. Passion and Devastation beneath Ethnic and Polytropic Identities in Michael Ondaatje�s
The English Patient
�Rashmi Gaur
9. Resisting Cultural Genocide: Beatrice Culletin�s In Search of April Raintree
�B. Indira
10. The Treatment of Love in Savitri: A Decolonized Indian Perspective
�Dipankar Chakrabarti
11. The Devil�s Wind: A Critical Appraisal
�P.N. Sinha
12. Polyphonic Journeys: Gur Charan Das�s A Fine Family
�K.M. Pandey
13. �Black and White� in the Short Stories of Jhumpa Lahiri
�Stella
14. �I� and �They�: The Dialogic of Kamala Das�s �Introduction�
�Rama Kundu
15. Effulgence of Imagery in the Verdurous of SAARC Poems
�Suka Joshua
16. K.S. Venkataramani�s Murugan, The Tiller: A Portrait of the Gandhian Dream of Rural India
�Uday Shankar Ojha
17. The Native Voices: A Case for the Second Tradition of the Post-Colonial Theory
�Gajendra Kumar and Kuldeep Kumar
18. Patrick White�s Voss; the Self-Explored
�Kh. Kunjo Singh
19. Cultural Contestation in Australian Aborigine Women Autobiographies
�Jyotirmay Tripathy
20. Relocating Minority Space: A Search for Identity in Taslima Nasrin�s Lajja
�Charu Chandra Mishra
21. Major Themes in Commonwealth Poetry
�Kh. Kunjo Singh
22. From Imperialism to Nativism
�Alka Gopal
23. I Heard the Owl Call My Name: The Twentieth Century in Retrospect
�Mohit K. Ray
Contributors