Commonwealth Literature: A Comprehensive Analysis

Contents: Preface. 1. Chinua Achebes things Fall Apart and the colonial paradox. 2. Thematic significance of indigenous legal regime in Chinua Achebe. 3. Religious conflict and its manifestations in Achebes arrow of God. 4. Kenyan literature and Ngogo Wa Thiongo. 5. The river between: a criticism. 6. Nigerian literature and the pioneering woks. 7. Conflict and character analysis in the lion and the jewel. 8. The political satire: a dance of the forests. 9. Kongis harvest: a contemporary Satire. 10. Resistance and counter resistance in my sons story by Nadine Gordimer. 11. Patrick Whites theme of relationship. 12. Margaret Lawrences the Stone Angel and Symbolism. 13. Tom Gibson as the colonial representative a study of a soldier of India. 14. Norman Partingtons mutiny novel. Bibliography.

Commonwealth Literature today stands for literatures in English written in the commonwealth countries outside the Anglo American tradition. What is common between the diverse members of the commonwealth in spite of their different calendars of independence and ethnological, cultural, political as also topographical set ups is that all these countries shared the common colonial experience. So from India to Nigeria, Canada to Kenya and Australia to Pakistan we can discern the varying patterns of a common human experience and emergence of cultural nationalism leading to an emphasis on their distinctiveness in literary heritage and assertion of cultural identity. Commonwealth literature thus presents a rich variety of aesthetic and cultural experience. The chapters collected in this volume spanning different countries and periods try to offer a taste of this interesting variety. The range covered here stretches from West African Drama to South African fiction, Australian and Caribbean literature to that of Indian Diaspora and South Asian poetry of the SAARC countries. Discussions on Indian literature cover the varied areas from devotional mysticism to realistic social satire, myth oriented novel to feminism, dialogism and reassessment of postcolonial theories.