Title: Postcolonial and New Literatures in English

PRQ:

“ … [T]hose peoples who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, assisted by the English language’s enormous flexibility and size; they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.”

                                                                                Salman Rushdie Imaginary Homelands

Rushdie and critic Bruce King agree that writers in former British colonies are creating a “newly ascendant” English literature that transforms contemporary and English literature in general.  In this course, we will read a variety of novelists, poets, short story writers, and dramatists, such as Rushdie, Michelle Cliff, Pauline Melville, Peter Carey, Roddy Doyle, Aminatta Forna, and Brian Friel who are writing in this “new” English tongue as they write back to empire and claim their own eclipsed cultures.  Students should expect to read eight-ten literary works, take quizzes, write two formal essays, and take midterm and final exams.  Although not required, it would be helpful if students are familiar with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.