Module Information

The module will provide students with the opportunity to engage with four leading works of Anglophone world literature and to analyse these txts through the lens of an appropriate range of postcolonial literary criticism. It build on the skills learned in Part One and Part Two literary modules by requiring students to take a theoretical approach to the study of African and Indian literature.

This module will allow students to enhance their knowledge and understanding of literature by studying some of the most vibrant examples of international Anglophone writing in the twentieth century. The first half of the module focuses on two novels that dramatise the rising momentum of Indian independence (Raja Rao’s Kanthapura (1938). The second half of the module moves critical attention to novels set in post-independence Zimbabwe (Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions) and India (Arundati Roy’s The God of Small Things). Students will examine the ways in which these novels engage the legacies of empire and colonialism; represent challenges to colonial authority and movements towards independence; and explore complex issues of power and identity in the postcolonial period. The authors’ use of English – historically the language of cultural imperialism – will also be assessed. In tandem with their reading of the primary texts, students are required to engage with a range of postcolonial literary criticism.