Taken literally, “Anglophone literature” refers to literatures written in English; however, in literary studies the term has many inflections, hence the need for a working definition. For the purpose of this examination, we define “Anglophone literature” as literatures in English produced by writers from nations that are former colonies of Britain, excluding the United States. The term “Anglophone" highlights the linguistic commonality of these writings. However, Anglophone literary critical discourse recognizes that the shared historical experience of British colonial rule and contemporary forms of imperialism forge other forms of connectedness of these writings besides the use of English. In addition, the discourse takes into serious account disparate historical, cultural and political contexts within which these literatures are produced. Finally, it should be noted that as a field of study, Anglophone literature has much in common with Commonwealth literature, Postcolonial literature and New Literatures in English.
We will cover writings produced from 1850 to the present, and initially by writers from Anglophone Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, including those from these areas in postcolonial diasporas.
Students who wish to specialize in the field of Anglophone literature are expected to:
1.Understand the historical development of this field of study.
2. Demonstrate in-depth knowledge of major literary writings (primary texts) from all of the Anglophone areas identified above.
3. Be familiar with social, cultural, and historical particularities of the Anglophone areas identified above. For example, students should be conversant with slavery in the Caribbean, the partition of India, independence movements in Anglophone Africa, apartheid in South Africa, and postcolonial migrations.
4. Be familiar with critical theories that have been used to interpret Anglophone literature and be able to apply insights gained to produce theoretically informed analyses of primary texts.
5. Understand transnational and trans-cultural dimensions of Anglophone literature.
Primary Texts
Anglophone Africa (This list includes continental African writers in the West)
Abrahams, Peter Mine Boy
Tell Freedom
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart
A Man of the People
Anthills of the Savannah
Aidoo, Ama Ata The Dilemma of a Ghost
Our Sister Killjoy
Changes: A Love Story
Armah, Ayi Kwei The Beautiful Ones are not yet Born
Fragments
Dangaremba, Tsitsi Nervous Conditions
Emecheta, Buchi Second-class Citizen
The Joys of Motherhood
Gordimer, Nadine July’s People
Head, Bessie A Question of Power
Langa, Mandla The Memory of Stones
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o A Grain of Wheat
Petals of Blood
Nwapa, Flora Efuru
Okri, Ben The Famished Road
Paton, Alan Cry, the Beloved Country
Soyinka, Wole The Lion and The Jewel
Death and the King’s Horseman
Tutuola, Amos The Palm-Wine Drinkard
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Primary Texts
Anglophone Caribbean (This list includes Caribbean writers in the West)
Brand, Dionne A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging
Brathwaite, Edward Kamau The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy
Cliff, Michelle No Telephone to Heaven
Dabydeen, David The Counting House
Gilroy, Beryl Frangipani House
Harris, Wilson Palace of the Peacock
Hodge, Merle Crick, Crack, Monkey
Kincaid, Jamaica A Small Place
Autobiography of My Mother
Lucy
Lamming, George In the Castle of My Skin
The Pleasures of Exile
Lovelace, Earl While Gods Are Falling
Marshall, Paule Brown Girl, Brownstones
Praisesong for the Widow
Mootoo, Shani Out on Main Street and Other Stories
Naipaul, V. S. Miguel Street
The Mimic Men
Persaud, Lakshmi Butterfly in the Wind
Nourbese Philip, Marlene Harriet’s Daughter
She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks
Phillips, Caryl Cambridge
Rhys, Jean Wide Sargasso Sea
Riley, Joan The Unbelonging
A Kindness to the Children
Selvon, Samuel The Lonely Londoners
Moses Migrating
Walcott, Derek Dream on Monkey Mountain
Omeros
Primary Texts
Anglophone South Asian (This list includes South Asian writers in the West)
Anand, Mulk Raj The Sword and the Sickle
Bond, Ruskin A Flight of Pigeons
Chandra, Vikram Red Earth, Pouring Rain
Chatterjee, Upamanyu English August
Das, Kamala The Old Playhouse and Other Poems
De, Shobha Small Betrayals
Desai, Anita Clear Light of Day
Ghosh, Amitav The Shadow Lines
The Calcutta Chromosome
Hosain, Attia Sunlight on a Broken Column
Lahiri, Jhumpa Interpreters of Maladies
Mistry, Rohinton Family Matters
Murkherjee, Bharati Jasmine
Nahal, Chaman Lal Azaadi
Narayan, R. K. The Guide
Rao, Raja Kanthapura
Roy, Arundhati The God of Small Things
Rushdie, Salman Midnight’s Children
The Moor’s Last Sigh
Seth, Vikram A Suitable Boy
Singh, Khushwant Train to Pakistan
Tagore, Rabindranath Gitanjali
Tharoor, Shashi The Great Indian Novel
Readings in History, Culture, Theory and Criticism
Achebe, Chinua Hopes and Impediments
Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
Appadurai, Arjun Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures
Basch, Linda G., Nina Glick Schiller, and Cristina Szanton Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture
---, ed. Nation and Narration
Césaire, Aimé Discourse on Colonialism
Coombes, Annie E. “Inventing the ‘Postcolonial’: Hybridity and Constituency in Contemporary Curating.” New Formations 18 (winter 1992):84-106.
Dabydeen, David and Brinsley Samaroo, eds. India in the Caribbean
Dash, J. Michael The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context
Davies, Carol Boyce Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject
Fanon, Frantz Black Skin, White Masks
The Wretched of the Earth
Gikandi, Simon Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature
Gilroy, Paul Against Race
Small Acts
There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack
Glissant, Edouard Caribbean Discourse
Hutcheon, Linda “‘Circling the Downspout of Empire’: Post-Colonialism and Postmodernism.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 20.4 (1989): 149-175
James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins
Jameson, Fredric. “Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism.: Social Text 15 (Fall 1986): 65-88.
Mohanty, Chandra “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Boundary 2 (Spring-Fall 1984): 333-58.
Morley, David and Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds. Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies
Mudimbe, V. Y. The Idea of Africa
Nehru, Jawaharlal The Discovery of India
Ngugi wa Thiongo Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature Rodney, Walter How Europe Underdeveloped Africa
Rushdie, Salman Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
Said, Edward Culture and Imperialism
Orientalism
Spivak, Gayatri “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds.
In Other Worlds
Takagi, Dana The Retreat from Race: Asian-American Admissions and Racial Politics
Thapar, Romila Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History
Trinh, T. Minh-Ha Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism
Vivekananda, Swami Jnana Yoga
Achebe, Chinua Morning Yet on Creation Day
Brathwaite, Edward Kamau The History of the Voice Contradictory Omens:
Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean
Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre
Edmonson, Belinda Making Men: Gender, Literary Authority and Women’s Writing in Caribbean Narrative
Davies Carol Boyce, and Elaine Savoy Fido, Out Of The Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Cooper, Carolyn Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the ‘Vulgar’ Body of Jamaican Popular Culture
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe
Forster, E.M. A Passage to India
Ghosh, Shri Aurobindo Life Divine
Hogan, Patrick Colm Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean
Long, Edward History of Jamaica
Mehta, Brinda Indo-Caribbean Women Writers Negotiating the Kala Pani
Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli Indian Philosophy
Shakespeare, William The Tempest
Shohat, Ella “Notes on the ‘Post-Colonial.’” Social Text 31/32 (192): 99-113.
Soyinka, Wole Myth, Literature, and the African World
Journals
Web sites
Films:
Anand, Vijay The Guide
Benegal, Dev English August
Benegal, Shyam Janoon
Mehta, Deepa Fire
Earth
Rooks, Pamela Train to Pakistan
Sathyn, M. S. Garam Hawa
Source: https://www.mtsu.edu/graduate_english/documents/Anglophone.doc
Web site to visit: https://www.mtsu.edu
Author of the text: indicated on the source document of the above text
If you are the author of the text above and you not agree to share your knowledge for teaching, research, scholarship (for fair use as indicated in the United States copyrigh low) please send us an e-mail and we will remove your text quickly. Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use)
The information of medicine and health contained in the site are of a general nature and purpose which is purely informative and for this reason may not replace in any case, the council of a doctor or a qualified entity legally to the profession.
The texts are the property of their respective authors and we thank them for giving us the opportunity to share for free to students, teachers and users of the Web their texts will used only for illustrative educational and scientific purposes only.
All the information in our site are given for nonprofit educational purposes