Postcolonial Studies and the Literary: Theory, Interpretation and the Novel

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 10
Introduction......Page 11
Part I......Page 16
Literary form and postcolonial studies......Page 18
The modernist ethos......Page 23
The postcolonial perspective......Page 27
Melancholic self-reflections......Page 31
Postcolonial studies and literature......Page 33
The melancholia of postcolonial studies......Page 37
Can the literary speak?......Page 41
Literature at the threshold......Page 46
Literary otherness......Page 48
The politics of form......Page 50
The monopolisation of the literary......Page 53
Realism as straw man......Page 56
Critical fictions......Page 61
Utopian trajectories......Page 67
The secret of the form......Page 70
Lukács's theory of the novel I: The Theory of the Novel......Page 73
Lukács's theory of the novel II: realism......Page 81
History, postcoloniality and literary form......Page 86
Part II......Page 88
The problematic of imitativeness......Page 90
Intermediary dreams......Page 92
Incomplete fusions......Page 95
History as still life......Page 99
The return of the repressed......Page 105
Negative realism......Page 109
Writing back to the centre and the question of canonicity......Page 111
Literalness and irony......Page 114
Narrative silences and mysteries......Page 115
Authorial struggles......Page 117
Cannibalism and otherness......Page 119
Thresholds of translation......Page 121
Arcades of foreignness......Page 124
Worldliness, criticism and literature......Page 125
The beginning is a ruin......Page 131
Lukácsian overtures......Page 136
Accidents and history......Page 138
Superfluity, interpretation, causes......Page 141
Antibodies and blood......Page 144
Games and laws......Page 146
Stitching, narrating, describing......Page 149
Conclusion: Realism, Form and Balance......Page 153
Notes......Page 158
Works Cited......Page 188
Index......Page 199