Postcolonial Literature

A selective bibliography of open access articles on Postcolonial Literature, favoring signed articles by recognized scholars, articles published in reviewed sources, and web sites that adhere to the Modern Language Association Guidelines for Authors of Web Pages

main page | 20th century authors | 19th century authors | postcolonial authors | Filipino-American literature

Literary criticism and analysis

Adesanmi, Pius. "Of Postcolonial Entanglement and Durée: Reflections on the Francophone African Novel: Introduction: Afropessimism and temporality." On pessimism in and about Africa. Comparative Literature, Summer 2004

Bachmann-Medick, Doris. "Cultural Misunderstanding in Translation: Multicultural Coexistence and Multicultural Conceptions of World Literature," in EESE 7/1996

George, Rosemary Marangoly. A review of The Politics of Home: Postcolonial Relocations and Twentieth Century Fiction (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996). Reviewed in MELUS, Winter, 1999 by Carol Maloney

Matzke, Christine and Susanne Muhleisen, eds. A brief summary of Postcolonial Postmortems; Crime Fiction From a Transcultural Perspective (Editions Rodopi, 2006). In Reference & Research Book News, August, 2006

Pordzik, Ralph. "Fictions of Empire: Imperial Vision in George Gissing's Later Fiction, with special regard to Henry Ryecroft (1903)," EESE 8/2002

Singh, Amritjit and Peter Schmidt, eds. A review of Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity, and Literature (Univ. of Mississippi Press, 2000). Reviewed in MELUS, Summer, 2003 by Tej N. Dhar

Stammwitz, Kati. "'Turning the Telescope in the Other Direction': Four Interviews with Post-Colonial Travel Writers: Pico Iyer, Frank Delaney, Dan Jacobson, and Dervla Murphy," EESE 1/1999

Templer, Bill. "American Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism a Century ago: its Discourse and Counterdiscourse in the Critical American Studies Classroom," EESE 2004

Overview, introduction

"Postcolonial Culture Studies" from Guide to Literary Theory

Introductions to literary tradition by country. For Australia and New Zealand; for East and Southeast Asia; for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka; for Africa. From The Poetry House project at St. Andrews Univ.

An overview of Postcolonial writers from Professor George Landow's Postcolonial Literature and Cultural Web, includes critical articles about authors, their themes, techniques, and their historical and cultural contexts

The Emory Univ. Postcolonial literature project provides introductory articles on many postcolonial authors along with lists of primary and secondary resources

An introduction to Postcolonial Studies, from Emory Univ. Professor Deepika Bahri

Reading Guides for World Literature, an online reading project from Professor Michael Day and the South Dakota Humanities Council. See "South Asia Reading" for a socio-political overview and links to resources on Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya and The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. See "Central and South American Readings" for a socio-political overview and links to resources on Ashes of Izalco by Claribel Alegria and Eva Luna by Isabel Allende. See "Africa Readings" for a socio-political overview and links to resources on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Nadine Gordimer's Crimes of Conscience

World Literature in English web site extensively covers the subject of postcolonial literature, from Fu Jen University in Taiwan

Definition, what is Postcolonial literature?

"After Iraq: Reframing Postcolonial Studies." Editorial by Priyamvada Gopal and Neil Lazarus. In New Formations 59

On the meaning of the term "postcolonial literature," by Dr. Paul Brians

An essay attempts to define some of the issues in Postcolonial study, by Professor Terry DeHay

"Some Issues in Postcolonial Theory." A professor's effort to define the meaning of postcolonial investigation, by John Lye

A deflating review of a recent book by an influential postcolonial theorist, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present," by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Reviewed in The New Statesman by Farrukh Dhondy

A bibliographic essay lists and briefly summarizes the influential studies and writers in the development of postcolonial thought. By T.V. Reed at Washington State Univ

Romanticism and Imperialism

O'Quinn, Daniel J. Introduction to "The Containment and Re-deployment of English India." Special Romantic Circles edition includes scholarly articles on this topic, November 2000

Bewell, Alan. A review of Bewell's Romanticism and Colonial Disease. Reviewed by Tim Fulford, Romanticism On the Net, 19 (August 2000)

Cobbett, William. A review of Cobbett's John Thelwall, Radicalism, Racism and Slavery: A Study in Burkean Parodics. Reviewed by Wood, Marcus in Romanticism On the Net, 15 (August 1999)

Fulford, Tim. "Blessed Bane: Christianity and Colonial Disease in Southey's Tale of Paraguay." Romanticism On the Net, 24 (November 2001)

Fulford, Tim and Peter J. Kitson, eds. A review of Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830. Reviewed by Wright, Julia M. in Romanticism On the Net, 17 (February 2000)

Hofkosh, Sonia and Alan Richardson, eds. A review of Romanticism, Race and Imperial Culture, 1780-1834. Reviewed by O'Quinn, Daniel. Romanticism On the Net, 11 (August 1998)

Makdisi, Saree. A review of Makdisi's, Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity. Reviewed by Wright, Julia M. in Romanticism On the Net, 15 (August 1999)

Persyn, Mary. "The Sublime Turn Away from Empire: Wordsworth's Encounter with Colonial Slavery, 1802," in Romanticism on the Net, 26 (2002)

Thomas, Helen. A review of Romanticism and Slave Narratives: Transatlantic Testimonies. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000). Reviewed by Sophie Thomas, Romanticism on the Net, Issue 28, November 2002

Journals

Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, with special editions on postcolonialism, neo-colonialism, disaporas, postcolonial fictions, and Yorga Wangi: Postcolonialism and Feminism. Literaryhistory has not yet indexed these impressive articles. A typical article is Sue Kossew "'Women's Words': A Reading of J.M. Coetzee's Women Narrators." There are over 50 full-text articles available, along with access to the full text of scholarly books on postcolonial topics

Continuum, a thematically based cultural studies journal in Australia, from 1987-1994, cover topics related to Asian, Australian, and multiculturalism in general film, t.v., media studies. Articles are freely available online

The SOAS Literary Review publishes articles on all aspects of the literatures of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Published by the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Articles are freely available online

Jouvert: Journal of Postcolonial Studies, explores many facets of postcolonial thought. Published by the College of the Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State Univ. Articles are freely available online