Indian English and the Fiction of National Literature
- Author: Rosemary Marangoly George, University of California, San Diego
- Date Published: September 2016
- availability: Available
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781316623077
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During the twentieth century, at the height of the independence movement and after, Indian literary writing in English was entrusted with the task of consolidating the image of a unified, seemingly caste-free, modernising India for consumption both at home and abroad. This led to a critical insistence on the proximity of the national and the literary, which in turn, led to the canonisation of certain writers and themes and the dismissal of others. Examining English anthologies of 'Indian literature', as well as the establishment of the Sahitya Akademi (the national academy of letters) and the work of R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand among others, Rosemary Marangoly George exposes the painstaking efforts that went into the elaboration of a 'national literature' in English for independent India even while deliberating the fundamental limitations of using a nation-centric critical framework for reading literary works.
Read more- Questions the very notion of 'national literature', a concept that is foundational to postcolonial literary studies
- Examines the presentation of English-language 'Indian literature' through an examination of literary institutions and anthologies during the twentieth century
- Offers new and radically different readings of popular writers like R. K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand
Reviews & endorsements
'This book offers an unusual yet convincing set of insights into the ways in which this language, mother-tongue of none but a handful of colonial and postcolonial elites in one of the world's most populous countries, still manages to exert and train its magnetic hold several decades after Independence.' Ananya Kabir, King's College London
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×Product details
- Date Published: September 2016
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9781316623077
- length: 298 pages
- dimensions: 230 x 154 x 18 mm
- weight: 0.44kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Prologue
1. Many a slip between the literary and the national
2. R. K. Narayan and the fiction of the 'ordinary Indian'
3. The in-between life of Mulk Raj Anand
4. The Sahitya Akademi's showcasing of national literature
5. Partition fiction and the 'birth' of national literature
Epilogue.
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