Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean

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SUNY Press, Feb 3, 2000 - Literary Criticism - 353 pages
This book examines the diverse responses of colonized people to metropolitan ideas and to indigenous traditions. Going beyond the standard isolation of mimeticism and hybridity--and criticizing Homi Bhabha's influential treatment of the former--Hogan offers a lucid, usable theoretical structure for analysis of the postcolonial phenomena, with ramifications extending beyond postcolonial literature. Developing this structure in relation to major texts by Derek Walcott, Jean Rhys, Chinua Achebe, Earl Lovelace, Buchi Emecheta, Rabindranath Tagore, and Attia Hosain, Hogan also provides crucial cultural background for understanding these and other works from the same traditions.

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Contents

Literatures of Colonial Contract Cultural Geography and the Structures of Identity
1
Dialectics of Mimeticism and Nativism Derek Walcotts Dream on Monkey Mountain
45
Colonialism Patriarchy and Creole Identity Jean Rhyss Wide Sargasso Sea
83
Culture and Despair Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart
103
Worship and Manness Earl Lovelaces The Wine of Astonishment
137
Lives of Women in the Region of Contract Buchi Emechetas The Joys of Motherhood
173
Orthodoxy and Universalism Rabindranath Tagores Gora
213
The Economics of Cultural Identity Attia Hosains Sunlight on a Broken Column
257
Socialism and the Politics of Otherness
303
Analytic Glossary of Selected Theoretical Concepts
317
Works Cited
325
Index
337
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About the author (2000)

Patrick Colm Hogan is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. He is the coeditor of Literary India: Comparative Studies in Aesthetics, Colonialism, and Culture, with Lalita Pandit, also published by SUNY Press.

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