Books on the topic 'French literature; Post-colonial period'

Publishing Africa in French provides a critical analysis of the global dynamics and cultural and publishing history of French and African literature. It focuses on French readership and the French literary-political sphere, and engages with issues of authorial authenticity, literary value, and author autonomy. The study is built on careful documentations of the pre- and post-publication process, and explores the relentless interweaving of ideas expressed in literary form, their institutional contexts and underlying human relationships, and asks: Who writes about Africa and who is Africa written for? The book is split into two sections, ‘Institutions’ and ‘Mediations’. The first part of the book, ‘Institutions’, situates three institutions of particular significance, the publishing houses of Le Seuil and Présence Africaine, and the Association nationale des écrivains de la mer et de l’outre-mer. ‘Mediations’, the second section of the book, concludes with a consideration on how institutional structures work into or against the literary texture of selected publications, and examines readers’ reports and editorial revision; the use of pseudonyms; the development of named collections and the process of literary translation from English. Publishing Africa in French aims to bring book-historical principles to bear on a decisive period in French literary history and foregrounds the influencing factors on literary expression and its material impressions in the period of decolonization.

This chapter traces the origins of Moroccan literature written in Spanish. Two parallel phenomena have nourished the writing of Arab authors in Spanish during the last two decades: the revival of the Spanish language in the old colonies of Morocco and the Western Sahara, and emigration (mainly Moroccan) to Spain. The use of Spanish as a literary language did not appear until the colonial era, culminating with the French-Spanish Protectorate in 1912. This chapter first considers the beginnings of Spanish-language Moroccan literature during the colonial period before discussing the rebirth of Spanish in Morocco. It then examines the early Moroccan novels published in Spanish, along with the rise of a migrant Spanish and Catalan literature written by Moroccan immigrants who arrived as children in the 1990s and by exiled Sahrawis and other Arab authors in Spain.

The nineteenth century saw a new wave of dictionaries, many of which remain household names. Those dictionaries didn’t just store words; they represented imperial ambitions, nationalist passions, religious fervour, and utopian imaginings. The Whole World in a Book explores a period in which globalization, industrialization, and social mobility were changing language in unimaginable ways. Dictionaries in the nineteenth century became more than dictionaries: they were battlefields between prestige languages and lower-status dialects; national icons celebrating the language and literature of the nation-state; and sites of innovative authorship where middle and lower classes, volunteers, women, colonial subjects, the deaf, and missionaries joined the ranks of educated white men in defining how people communicated and understood the world around them. This volume investigates dictionaries in the nineteenth century covering languages as diverse as Canadian French, English, German, Frisian, Japanese, Libras (Brazilian sign language), Manchu, Persian, Quebecois, Russian, Scots, and Yiddish.

This book examines cultural history and cultural transformation in the period spanning the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and how such transition relates to modernity. Taking a dynamically diachronic approach, it offers a fresh perspective on the historiography of culture and literature, with emphasis on the idea of periodization and the tendency to divide cultural history into different eras. Many of the essays focus on themes spanning the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, each linking pre- and post-Reformation cultures, including those related to religion, and highlight the creative and destructive anxieties as well as the legacy of the Reformation.

In the collective monography the actual problem of contemporary perception of the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 is considered – both in Russian literature, literature of the peoples of Russian Federation and in literatures of foreign countries. The authors’ attention is focused on the most characteristic features and the main trends in interpretation of military topics in a broad chronological framework: they cover not only the years of World War II, but also the pre-war and post-war peri- ods. The book touches upon such important issues as the attitude of A.M. Gorky to the war, the role of writers who became front-line correspondents, their diaries, notebooks and memoirs as primary sources of literary works. The features of the interpretation of military theme in Russian émigré literature, the attitude of Russian émigré writers to fascism, their participation in French Resistance movement are analyzed. There are also articles devoted to perception of the experience of World War II and its consequences in literatures of foreign countries. The subject of articles covers not only individual works, but also affects the sources and textual aspects of the study of the problems under discussion. It includes a comparative analysis of archival materials and features of their reflection in war poetry and prose. A large number of previously unknown documents is introduced into scientific circulation. Here lies the novelty of the collective monography and its main difference from the previously published works on military theme in literature. The authors analyzed the manuscripts from various archives: of A.M. Gorky, A.P. Platonov, A.N. Tolstoy, IMLI RAN, FSB, materials of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Commission on His- tory of the Great Patriotic war. The book includes five parts. This division is due to desire to reflect the diversity of genres in literature devoted to the war, its importance in contemporary historical context, its international character and how the theme of war analyzed by literary critics from different countries. In some articles the prose of war participants is analyzed, at the same time its originality, documentary character, aspiration to epic meaning is noted. Generally speaking, this book touches on the problem of contem- porary understanding of the events of war in literature in comparison with how this topic was interpreted earlier.

This title is part of the theOxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literatureseries, edited by Paul Strohm. This book examines cultural history and cultural change in the period between the fourteenth and the seventeenth centuries, a period spanning the medieval and Renaissance. It takes a dynamically diachronic approach to cultural history and brings the perspective of alongue duréeto literary history. It redraws historical categories and offers a fresh perspective on historical temporality by challenging the stereotypes that might encourage any iconographic division between medieval and Renaissance modes of thinking. It also discusses the concept of nation in relation to three issues that have particular relevance to cross-period “cultural reformations”: modernity, language, and England and Englishness. The book is organized into nine sections: Histories, Spatialities, Doctrines, Legalities, Outside the Law, Literature, Communities, Labor, and Selfhood. Each contributor focuses on a theme that links pre- and post-Reformation cultures, from anachronism and place to travel, vernacular theology, conscience, theater, monasticism, childbirth, passion, style, despair, autobiography, and reading. The essays highlight the creative and destructive anxieties as well as the legacy of the Reformation.

Post-Millennial Palestine: Literature, Memory, Resistance confronts how Palestinians have recently felt obliged to re-think memory and resistance in response to dynamic political and regional changes in the twenty-first century; prolonged spatial and temporal dispossession; and the continued deterioration of the peace process. Insofar as the articulation of memory in (post)colonial contexts can be viewed as an integral component of a continuing anti-colonial struggle for self-determination, in tracing the dynamics of conveying the memory of ongoing, chronic trauma, this collection negotiates the urgency for Palestinians to reclaim and retain their heritage in a continually unstable and fretful present. The collection offers a distinctive contribution to the field of existing scholarship on Palestine, charting new ways of thinking about the critical paradigms of memory and resistance as they are produced and represented in literary works published within the post-millennial period. Reflecting on the potential for the Palestinian narrative to recreate reality in ways that both document it and resist its brutality, the critical essays in this collection show how Palestinian writers in the twenty-first century critically and creatively consider the possible future(s) of their nation.

Os textos produzidos na denominada América Portuguesa (1500-1822) abrangem os mais variados campos das letras ocidentais – lírica, épica, dramaturgia, historiografia, epistolografia, parenética, lexicografia, etc. – e seguem um modelo retórico-poético e teológico-político comum, próprio das Letras do Ancien Régime. Manuscritos e impressos escritos em várias línguas (português, principalmente, mas também em latim, castelhano, francês, italiano, tupi-guarani, língua geral, etc.), por um número de autores considerável (Pero Vaz de Caminha, José de Anchieta, Antônio Vieira, Francisco Manuel de Melo, Gregório de Matos, Manoel Botelho de Oliveira, Sebastião da Rocha Pita, Basílio da Gama, Antônio da Costa Peixoto, Francisco Alves de Sousa, etc.), corriam com avidez entre os leitores. São justamente esses textos, esses autores e esses leitores os que conformam o sistema cultural das Letras na América Portuguesa. A historiografia brasileira, portuguesa e inclusive internacional tem se debruçado há já vários decênios no estudo dos Estados do Brasil e do Maranhão e Grão-Pará, tanto de um ponto de vista micro-histórico como macro-histórico, salientando-se nos últimos tempos a sua relação com o resto do mundo, no âmbito próprio da global history. Nos últimos decênios, ao mesmo tempo, a literatura vem perdendo, paulatinamente, o seu poder de conhecimento legitimador das elites culturais de uma nação. Esse esquecido «Parnaso Brasileiro» mantinha, no entanto, um fluido diálogo cultural com Lisboa assim como com outras cidades europeias, diálogo esse que os processos de formação das literaturas exclusivamente nacionais, brasileira e/ou portuguesa, vieram apagar ou até mesmo ignorar. No espaço hermenêutico próprio dos Atlantic Studies, recuperam-se, neste livro, as Letras escritas e lidas na América Portuguesa, estudam-se seus autores, interpretam-se textos escolhidos e indaga-se tanto sobre seus primeiros leitores, como sobre seus leitores de ontem e de hoje. Um conjunto de docentes do Brasil, de Portugal, da Alemanha e da Espanha discute textos de Vaz de Caminha, Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão, Antônio Vieira, Botelho de Oliveira, Basílio da Gama, Antônio da Costa Peixoto e Santa Rita Durão, entre outros. Die in der sogenannten »América Portuguesa« (1500-1822) entstandenen Texte gehören zu verschiedensten Diskursformen der westlichen Literatur und Kultur: Lyrik, Epik, Dramaturgie, Historiographie, Epistolographie, Homiletik, Lexikographie usw. Sie folgen einem gemeinsamen rhetorisch-poetischen und theologisch-politischen Modell, das charakteristisch für die Texte des Ancien Régime war. Manuskripte und Drucke in verschiedenen Sprachen (hauptsächlich Portugiesisch, aber auch Latein, Spanisch, Französisch, Italienisch, Tupi-Guarani, Língua Geral etc.) von einer beachtlichen Anzahl von Autoren (Pero Vaz de Caminha, José de Anchieta, Antônio Vieira, Francisco Manuel de Melo, Gregório de Matos, Manoel Botelho de Oliveira, Sebastião da Rocha Pita, Basílio da Gama, Antônio da Costa Peixoto, Francisco Alves de Sousa usw.) fanden eine umfassende Leserschaft. All diese Elemente - Texte, Autoren und Leserschaft – bilden das System der »Letras« in der »América Portuguesa«. Die brasilianische, portugiesische und sogar die internationale Geschichtsschreibung konzentriert sich seit mehreren Jahrzehnten auf das Studium der Kolonialstaaten Brasil und Maranhão e Grão-Pará sowohl aus mikro- als auch aus makrohistorischer Sicht. Gleichzeitig verliert die Literatur in den letzten Jahrzehnten allmählich die Funktion, das Wissen der kulturellen Eliten einer Nation zu legitimieren. Der aktuell wenig beachtete »Parnaso Brasileiro« unterhielt einen intensiven kulturellen Dialog mit Lissabon wie auch mit anderen europäischen Städten, einen Dialog, der der Ausbildung ausschließlich nationaler Literaturen, brasilianischer und/oder portugiesischer, wenig Stellenwert einräumte oder sie sogar ignorierte. Im hermeneutischen Raum, den die Atlantic Studies eröffnen, erschließt dieses Buch die in der »América Portuguesa« geschriebenen und gelesenen Texte, beschäftigt sich mit ihren Autoren, interpretiert ausgewählte Texte und fragt nach ihren ersten Lesern sowie nach ihren Leserinnen und Lesern gestern und heute. Eine Gruppe von Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern aus Brasilien, Portugal, Deutschland und Spanien diskutiert Texte u.a. von Vaz de Caminha, Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão, Antônio Vieira, Botelho de Oliveira, Basílio da Gama, Antônio da Costa Peixoto und Santa Rita Durão. The texts produced in the so-called “América Portuguesa” (1500-1822) cover the most varied fields of Western Literature and Culture – lyric, epic, dramaturgy, historiography, epistolography, homiletics, lexicography, etc. – and follow a common rhetorical-poetic and theological-political model, typical for the Ancien Régime. Manuscripts and prints were written in various languages (Portuguese, mainly, but also Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, Tupi-Guarani, Língua Geral, etc.), by a considerable number of authors (Pero Vaz de Caminha, José de Anchieta, Antônio Vieira, Francisco Manuel de Melo, Gregório de Matos, Manoel Botelho de Oliveira, Sebastião da Rocha Pita, Basílio da Gama, Antônio da Costa Peixoto, Francisco Alves de Sousa, etc.) found a broad reception by readers. Precisely, these texts, these authors and these readers constituted the literary system in the “América Portuguesa”. Brazilian, Portuguese, and even international historiography has focused for several decades on the study of the colonial states Brasil and Maranhão e Grão-Pará, both from a micro-historical and macro-historical point of view, emphasizing recently their relationship with the rest of the world in the context of global history. Currently, literature is gradually losing its power of legitimising knowledge of the cultural elites of a nation. This forgotten “Parnaso Brasileiro” maintained, however, a fluid cultural dialogue with Lisbon as well as with other European cities, a dialogue that the formation of exclusively national literatures, Brazilian and/or Portuguese, came to neglect or even ignore. In the hermeneutic space opened up by the Atlantic Studies, this book deals with texts written and read in the “América Portuguesa”, studies its authors, interprets selected works and inquires both about its first readers and about its readers yesterday and today. A group of scholars from Brazil, Portugal, Germany and Spain discusses texts by Vaz de Caminha, Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão, Antônio Vieira, Botelho de Oliveira, Basílio da Gama, Antônio da Costa Peixoto and Santa Rita Durão, among others.

2010 marked the 50^th anniversary of the ‘Year of Africa’. All France’s colonies in sub-Saharan Africa gained their independence in that year. This book brings together leading scholars from across the globe to review ‘Francophone Africa at Fifty’. It examines continuities from the colonial to the post-colonial period and analyses the diverse and multi-faceted legacy of French colonial rule in sub-Saharan Africa. It also reviews the decolonization of French West Africa in comparative perspective and observes how independence is remembered and commemorated fifty years on.

This book looks at the history of Indian migrants in Australia and New Zealand over a period of two and a half centuries. It looks at the history of their migration, settlement, and encounter with racism. Indians now constitute a significant ethnic minority in Australia and New Zealand. According to the most recent census figures, they number slightly more than half a million, but represent a successful ethnic community making significant contributions to their host societies and economies. The histories of their migration go back to the early colonial period, but rarely do they find any space in the global literature on Indian diaspora, probably because of their small numbers. This book covers their history over the past two and half centuries, covering both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ diaspora; the ‘old’, consisting of the labourers who migrated under pressure of colonial capital, and the ‘new’ representing the post-war professional migrants. It also looks closely at the host societies which over this period have been receiving and interacting with the Indian migrants and the contributions of a few Antipodeans who travelled to India in the early twentieth century bringing their ideas and service. However, this book is not just about the diaspora; it is also about the circulation of ideas between the Antipodes and India and the contribution of this circulation to both the British Empire and the Commonwealth.

This chapter discusses the works of three Canadian novelists best known internationally: Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje. The careers of Davies, Atwood, and Ondaatje, although overlapping chronologically, represent distinctive stages in Canada's evolving cultural traditions and publishing practices since the 1950s. Davies's novels signal the first stage in a transition from colonial to postcolonial identity in post-war Canada. Atwood in the 1970s provided the script for a Canadian cultural and literary identity separate from British and American in what Carol Shields called ‘a period of explosive patriotism’. Ondaatje's novels and family memoir epitomize the ‘refocusing and defocusing’ of Canadian literature since the 1980s, coinciding with the nation's shifts into multiculturalism and transnationalism. The chapter first provides a background on Davies, Atwood, and Ondaatje's careers before considering some of their works, including the Deptford trilogy (Davies), The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood), and The English Patient (Ondaatje).

This chapter deals with the question of innovation in Indian business from a historical perspective. After a brief survey of the literature, emphasizing how divided scholarly opinion was regarding the existence of forms of innovation in Indian business prior to the colonial era, the focus shifts to the British period. It is shown that Schumpeter’s definition of innovation equating it with technological innovation cannot be fruitfully applied to the Indian business scene. Two case studies are then proposed: Tata Iron & Steel, the largest Indian industrial firm, is shown to have been innovative in the specific context of India’s backward industrial scene, while the Sindwork merchants of Hyderabad are an instance of an Indian trading network which extended its range to the entire world. Concluding remarks interrogate post-Independence developments and stress the limits of the innovativeness of Indian business, prior to the recent liberal reforms.

The post-World War II period saw the increased migration of non-anglophone Europeans and Asians to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, resulting in the formation of hybridized diasporic communities that by the 1990s necessitated a revised rhetoric of nationhood. The chapter also examines the development of a Pacific literature and the concept of a ‘new Oceania’ founded on transformation of the past and ‘free from the taint of colonialism’, and transcending colonial patterns of regional and local identity. It discusses fiction writing in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific by immigrant writers after World War II and the Vietnam War, followed by immigrants fleeing from violence in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Finally, it looks at the emergence of a new generation of ethnically hybridized, culturally mobile writers who attempt to move beyond diasporic binaries to tackle issues of race, language, and belonging from transnational perspectives in an era marked by changes in publishing practices in a global literary marketplace.

Between the Ottomans and the Entente is the first social history of the First World War written from the perspective of the Arab diasporas in the United States, Brazil, and Argentina. The war between the Ottoman Empire and the Entente Powers placed the half million Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian migrants living abroad in a complicated geopolitical predicament. As Ottoman citizens living in a pro-Entente hemisphere, Arab migrants faced new demands for loyalty by their host societies; simultaneously, they confronted a multiplying legal regime of migration restriction, passport control, and nationality disputes designed to claim Syrian migrants while also controlling their movements. This work tracks the politics and activism of Syrian migrants from the 1908 Young Turk Revolution through the early French Mandate period in the 1920s. It argues that Syrian migrant activists opposed Ottoman rule from the diaspora, collaborating with the Entente powers because they believed this war work would bolster the cause of Syria’s liberation from Unionist rule. Instead, the Entente Powers used support from Syrian migrant communities to bolster colonial claims on a post-Ottoman Levant. This work captures a series of state projects to claim Syrian migrants for the purposes of nation-building in the Arab Middle East, and the efforts of Syrian migrants to resist the categorical schema of the homogenous nation-state and policies of partition and displacement.

This chapter focuses on the development of the novel genre in Tunisia. In 1881, Tunisia was transferred from Ottoman rule to French Protectorate, with important implications for the country linguistically and culturally. The difficulties of publishing and the development of nationalism under colonial rule influenced linguistic choices as well as the themes of the novels produced. In the post-independence era, nationalism, secularism, women’s rights, and patriotism became the themes of Tunisian literature in both Arabic and French. Censorship continued to be an issue for writers. This chapter examines the beginnings of the Arabic novel in Tunisia and considers works by Arabophone women writers. Finally, it looks at a number of Francophone novels, as well as novels published after the 2011 revolution.