
Literary Location and Dislocation of Myth in the Post/Colonial Anglophone World
Brill (Publisher)
Published on 9. November 2017
Book
Hardback
274 pages
978-90-04-35983-3 (ISBN)
Description
The English-speaking world today is so diverse that readers need a gateway to its many postcolonial narratives and art forms. This collection of essays examines this diversity and what brings so many different cultures together. Whether Indian, Canadian, Australasian or Zimbabwean, the stories discussed focus on how artists render experiences of separation, belonging, and loss. The histories and transformations postcolonial countries have gone through have given rise to a wide range of myths that retrace their birth, evolution, and decline. Myths have enabled ethnic communities to live together; the first section of this collection dwells on stories, which can be both inclusive and exclusive, under the aegis of 'nation'.
While certain essays revisit and retell the crucial role women have played in mythical texts like the Mahabharata, others discuss how settler colonies return to and re-appropriate a past in order to define themselves in the present. Crises, clashes, and conflicts, which are at the heart of the second section of this book, entail myths of historical and cultural dislocation. They appear as breaks in time that call for reconstruction and redefinition, a chief instance being the trauma of slavery, with its deep geographical and cultural dislocations. However, the crises that have deprived entire communities of their homeland and their identity are followed by moments of remembrance, reconciliation, and rebuilding. As the term 'postcolonial' suggests, the formerly colonized people seek to revisit and re-investigate the impact of colonization before committing it to collective memory. In a more specifically literary section, texts are read as mythopoeia, foregrounding the aesthetic and poetic issues in colonial and postcolonial poems and novels. The texts explored here study in different ways the process of mythologization through images of location and dislocation. The editors of this collection hope that readers worldwide will enjoy reading about the myths that have shaped and continue to shape postcolonial communities and nations.
CONTRIBUTORS: Elara Bertho, Dunlaith Bird, Marie-Christine Blin, Jaine Chemmachery, Andre Dodeman, Biljana Doric Francuski, Frederic Dumas, Daniel Karlin, Sabine Lauret-Taft, Anne Le Guellec-Minel, Elodie Raimbault, Winfried Siemerling, Laura Singeot, Francoise Storey, Jeff Storey, Christine Vandamme
While certain essays revisit and retell the crucial role women have played in mythical texts like the Mahabharata, others discuss how settler colonies return to and re-appropriate a past in order to define themselves in the present. Crises, clashes, and conflicts, which are at the heart of the second section of this book, entail myths of historical and cultural dislocation. They appear as breaks in time that call for reconstruction and redefinition, a chief instance being the trauma of slavery, with its deep geographical and cultural dislocations. However, the crises that have deprived entire communities of their homeland and their identity are followed by moments of remembrance, reconciliation, and rebuilding. As the term 'postcolonial' suggests, the formerly colonized people seek to revisit and re-investigate the impact of colonization before committing it to collective memory. In a more specifically literary section, texts are read as mythopoeia, foregrounding the aesthetic and poetic issues in colonial and postcolonial poems and novels. The texts explored here study in different ways the process of mythologization through images of location and dislocation. The editors of this collection hope that readers worldwide will enjoy reading about the myths that have shaped and continue to shape postcolonial communities and nations.
CONTRIBUTORS: Elara Bertho, Dunlaith Bird, Marie-Christine Blin, Jaine Chemmachery, Andre Dodeman, Biljana Doric Francuski, Frederic Dumas, Daniel Karlin, Sabine Lauret-Taft, Anne Le Guellec-Minel, Elodie Raimbault, Winfried Siemerling, Laura Singeot, Francoise Storey, Jeff Storey, Christine Vandamme
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
544 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-35983-3 (9789004359833)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
ANDRE DODEMAN is an Associate Professor at the University of Grenoble-Alpes in the Foreign Languages department. He has published articles on many Canadian contemporary writers and co-edited two books on postcolonial literature.
ELODIE RAIMBAULT is an Associate Professor at the University of Grenoble-Alpes. She has published on British writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, particularly Rudyard Kipling, focusing on cartographic and geopoetic representations of colonial territories.
ELODIE RAIMBAULT is an Associate Professor at the University of Grenoble-Alpes. She has published on British writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, particularly Rudyard Kipling, focusing on cartographic and geopoetic representations of colonial territories.
Content
List of Figures
Introduction
PART ONE: MYTHS OF NATION-BUILDING
Woman as Goddess or Woman as Victim? The Role of Women in the Mahabharata and Chitra Divakaruni's The Palace of Illusions
BILJANA ?OR IC-FRANCUSK I
'On a road between two cities': Relocating the Myths of the Indian Nation in Amit Chaudhuri's A Strange and Sublime Address (1991) and St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)
JULIE BELUAU
Framing the West: Myth and Art in Yosemite and Yellowstone's Early Photographs
MARIE-CHRIST INE BLIN
How to Picket-Fence a Mountain: Myths of Domesticity and Dislocation in Isabella Bird's Wild West
DUNLAITH BIRD
The Tasmanian Tiger: From Extinction to Identity Myth in White Australian Society and Fiction
ANNE LE GUELL EC-MINEL
PART TWO: DIS/LOCATIONS: CLASHES AND CONFLICTS
Migrant Myth: Freedom, Diaspora, and the Black Atlantic
WINFR IED SIEMERLING
Reworkings of a Literary Myth and Historical Construction: Nehanda (Zimbabwe)
ELARA BERTHO
Constructing and Deconstructing Myths of British Colonial Identity and Femininity in Mutiny Fiction: Meadows Taylor's Seeta (1872) and Flora Annie Steel's On the Face of the Waters (1897)
JAINE CHEMMACHERY
Novel Myths for a White Australasia: Dealing with the Native in Mark Twain's Following the Equator
FREDERIC DUMAS
Transfiguration of Australian Founding Myths in Patrick White's Fiction: Voss as an Iconoclastic Reinterpretation of the Explorer Myth
CHRI ST INE VANDAMME
PART THREE: IMAGINARY DISLOCATIONS: FROM MYTHOPOEIA TO THE RELOCATION OF MYTH
"In Vishnu-land what avatar?" Robert Browning and the Empire of Song
DANIEL KARLIN
Imagined Topographies of the Sundarbans in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide
SAB INE LAURET-TAFT
Transcending Postcolonial Identity Through Myth: Yann Martel's Life of Pi
FRANCOISE STOREY & JEFF STOREY
Relocating the Mythical Self in Three Maori Novels: Potiki by Patricia Grace, The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera,and the bone people by Keri Hulme
LAURA SINGEOT
Notes on Contributors and Editors
Index
Introduction
PART ONE: MYTHS OF NATION-BUILDING
Woman as Goddess or Woman as Victim? The Role of Women in the Mahabharata and Chitra Divakaruni's The Palace of Illusions
BILJANA ?OR IC-FRANCUSK I
'On a road between two cities': Relocating the Myths of the Indian Nation in Amit Chaudhuri's A Strange and Sublime Address (1991) and St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)
JULIE BELUAU
Framing the West: Myth and Art in Yosemite and Yellowstone's Early Photographs
MARIE-CHRIST INE BLIN
How to Picket-Fence a Mountain: Myths of Domesticity and Dislocation in Isabella Bird's Wild West
DUNLAITH BIRD
The Tasmanian Tiger: From Extinction to Identity Myth in White Australian Society and Fiction
ANNE LE GUELL EC-MINEL
PART TWO: DIS/LOCATIONS: CLASHES AND CONFLICTS
Migrant Myth: Freedom, Diaspora, and the Black Atlantic
WINFR IED SIEMERLING
Reworkings of a Literary Myth and Historical Construction: Nehanda (Zimbabwe)
ELARA BERTHO
Constructing and Deconstructing Myths of British Colonial Identity and Femininity in Mutiny Fiction: Meadows Taylor's Seeta (1872) and Flora Annie Steel's On the Face of the Waters (1897)
JAINE CHEMMACHERY
Novel Myths for a White Australasia: Dealing with the Native in Mark Twain's Following the Equator
FREDERIC DUMAS
Transfiguration of Australian Founding Myths in Patrick White's Fiction: Voss as an Iconoclastic Reinterpretation of the Explorer Myth
CHRI ST INE VANDAMME
PART THREE: IMAGINARY DISLOCATIONS: FROM MYTHOPOEIA TO THE RELOCATION OF MYTH
"In Vishnu-land what avatar?" Robert Browning and the Empire of Song
DANIEL KARLIN
Imagined Topographies of the Sundarbans in Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide
SAB INE LAURET-TAFT
Transcending Postcolonial Identity Through Myth: Yann Martel's Life of Pi
FRANCOISE STOREY & JEFF STOREY
Relocating the Mythical Self in Three Maori Novels: Potiki by Patricia Grace, The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera,and the bone people by Keri Hulme
LAURA SINGEOT
Notes on Contributors and Editors
Index