Postcolonial Literature in English
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Abstract
Some of the most compelling and innovative writing in the English language over the past eighty years or so has emanated from far beyond the British and Irish Isles – from, for example, Australia, Barbados, Canada, the Indian subcontinent, Jamaica, Kenya, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Trinidad and Zimbabwe. The literature from these and other English-speaking countries is now commonly referred to as ‘postcolonial literature’, a term which clearly announces a connection to the history of British colonialism, which (among other things) established English as a principal language in these countries and thus as a language available for literary production. While their literary and cultural identities are by no means defined by their links to Britain, these countries were all once colonised by Britain and were all formerly part of the British empire, so the stories of how their English literatures have developed are inevitably bound up with the story of the rise and fall – and after-effects – of that empire. Accordingly, this chapter begins with a detailed survey (in the chronology and the historical overview) of the development, growth and decline of the British empire, from Britain's earliest colonial adventures in the sixteenth century to the empire's zenith in the early years of the twentieth century and on to the period of decolonisation after the Second World War which led to independence for almost all the former colonies by the 1980s. To the extent that these colonies shared at least some similar experiences within this overarching historical context, one can identify some common factors in the emergence of their individual traditions of literature in English, along with some common characteristics and concerns. So while, to do full justice to the unique character and complexity of each country's own literature, it may be preferable to talk in the plural of ‘postcolonial literatures’ (and perhaps better still simply to refer to a country's literature by its own national name), it can be helpful, for the purposes of general analysis and comparison, to posit a singular field of postcolonial literature in which texts are seen to have important elements in common in their critical and creative engagements with the processes of colonialism, decolonisation and post-colonial independence.