Literary Theory - Week 10

Flashcards about post-colonial literature, covering its definition, historical context, the role of English studies, and key concepts like hegemony, language, place, displacement, and various theoretical models.

Post-Colonial Literatures

Writing by people formerly colonized, especially by Britain, addressing culture affected by the imperial process from colonization to the present.

Post-colonial term use

Covers all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization to the present day.

English Studies Historical Context

The study of English has been used to promote nationalism, linking language and literature to reinforce cultural and political ideologies.

Imperial Oppression

Control over language where the education system imposes a standard version marginalizing variations as impurities.

Linguistic Alienation

Condition of alienation inevitably felt until the colonizing language is replaced or appropriated.

Place and Displacement

The concern with the development or recovery of an effective identifying relationship between self and place, often eroded by dislocation and cultural denigration

Post-Colonial Literary Theory

Emerges from the inability of European theory to deal adequately with the complexities and culturally diverse writing of post-colonial literature.

National or Regional Models

Emphasize the distinctive features of particular national or regional cultures within post-colonial literature.

Race-Based Models

Shared characteristics across national literatures, such as the common racial inheritance in African diaspora literatures.

Comparative Models

Account for linguistic, historical, and cultural features across two or more post-colonial literatures.

Comprehensive Comparative Models

Argue for features like hybridity and syncreticity as constitutive elements of all post-colonial literatures.

Syncretism

Process by which previously distinct linguistic categories & cultural formations merge into a single new form

Mimicry of the Centre

A process of conscious affiliation proceeding under the guise of filiation.

Development of English

A privileged academic subject in nineteenth-century Britain that linked its methodology to that of the Classics.

Literary Canon

The body of British texts that frequently acts as a touchstone of taste and value.

RS-English (Received Standard English)

Asserts the English of south-east England as a universal norm.

Post-colonial Literatures Examples

The literatures of African countries, Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Caribbean countries, India, Malaysia, Malta, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, South Pacific Island countries, and Sri Lanka.