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E-book
Author Roy, Sneharika, author.

Title The postcolonial epic : from Melville to Walcott and Ghosh / Sneharika Roy
Published London : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, [2018]
©2018

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 208 pages) : illustrations
Series Literary cultures of the global south
Literary cultures of the global south.
Contents 1. Rallying the tropes: the language of violence and the violence of language -- 2.̀History in the future tense': genealogy as prophecy -- 3.̀The artifice of eternity': ekphrasis as ̀an-other' epic -- 4. Conclusion: resistant nostalgia
Summary "This book demonstrates the epic genre's enduring relevance to the Global South. It identifies a contemporary avatar of classical epic, the 'postcolonial epic', ushered in by Herman Melville's Moby Dick, a foundational text of North America, and exemplified by Derek Walcott's Caribbean masterpiece Omeros and Amitav Ghosh's South Asian saga, the Ibis trilogy. The work focuses on the epic genre's rich potential to articulate post-imperial concerns with nation and migration across the Global North-South divide. It foregrounds the genre's postcolonial shifts from politics to political economy, the subaltern reconfigurations of capitalist and imperial temporalities, and the post-structuralist preoccupation with language and representation. In addition to bringing to light hitherto unexamined North-South affiliations between Melville, Walcott and Ghosh, the book proposes a fresh approach to epic through the comparative concept of 'political epic', where an avowed national politics promoting a culture's 'pure' origins coexists uneasily with a disavowed poetics of intertextual borrowing from 'other' cultures. An important intervention in literary studies, this volume will interest scholars and researchers of postcolonial studies, especially South Asian and Caribbean literature, Global South studies, transnational studies and cultural studies."--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages188-202) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Epic literature -- History and criticism
Postcolonialism in literature.
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Literary.
Postcolonialism in literature.
Epic literature.
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
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