Post-colonial literature

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Postcolonial literature is a branch of Postmodern literature concerned with the political and cultural independence of peoples formerly subjugated in colonial empires.

Post-colonial literary critics re-examine classic literature with a particular focus on the social "discourse" that shaped it. For instance, in Orientalism, Edward Said analyzes the works of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Baudelaire and Lautréamont, exploring how they were both influenced by and helped to shape a societal fantasy of European racial superiority. Post-colonial fictional writers interact with the traditional colonial discourse, but modify or subvert it; for instance by retelling a familiar story from the perspective of an oppressed minor character in the story, for example Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which was written as a 'prequel' to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre.


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Joseph Conrad and Charlotte Brontë are not "post-colonial" authors per se, but are of specific interest within postcolonial theory in part because postcolonial authors such as Chinua Achebe and Jean Rhys (among others) engage and rework their novels. Shakespeare's The Tempest has a colonial setting and his Othello has a racial dynamic, and both of these are frequent points of reference for post-colonial authors.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

  • The Arnold Anthology of Post-Colonial Literatures in English edited by John Thieme
  • Chelsea 46: World Literature in English (1987)
  • Poetry International 7/8 (2003-2004)
  • Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English edited by Eugene Benson and L. W. Conolly
  • Commonwealth Literature: An Essay Towards the Re-definition of a Popular/Counter Culture by Alamgir Hashmi
  • Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors by Elleke Boehmer
  • A Sense of Place: Essays in Post-Colonial Literatures edited

by Britta Olinde

  • Thompson, Peter, Littérature moderne du monde francophone. (Anthology.) Chicago: NTC (McGraw-Hill), 1997


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