The Empire Writes Back

General Editor's Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction - What are post-colonial literatures?, Post-colonial literatures and English Studies, Development of post-colonial literatures, Hegemony, Language, Place and displacement, Post-coloniality and theory; 1. Cutting the ground - critical models of post-colonial literatures - National and regional models, Comparisons between two or more regions, The 'Black writing' model, Wider comparative models, Models of hybridity and syncreticity; 2. Re-placing language - textual strategies in post-colonial writing - Abrogation and appropriation, Language and abrogation, A post-colonial linguistic theory - the Creole continuum, The metonymic function of language variance, Strategies of appropriation in post-colonial writing; 3. Re-placing the text - the liberation of post-colonial writing - The imperial moment - control of the means of communication, Colonialism and silence - Lewis Nkosi's Mating Birds, Colonialism and 'authenticity' - V.S Naipaul's The Mimic Men, Radical Otherness and hybridity - Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage, Appropriating marginality - Janet Frame's The Edge of the Alphabet, Appropriating the frame of power - R.K. Narayan's The Vendor of Sweets; 4. Theory at the crossroads - indigenous theory and post-colonial reading - Indian literary theories, African literary theories, The settler colonies, Caribbean theories; 5. Re-placing theory - post-colonial writing and literary theory - Post-colonial literatures and postmodernism, Post-colonial reconstructions - literature, meaning, value, Post-colonialism as a reading strategy, Re-thinking the Post-colonial. Conclusion - More english than English. Reader's guide. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Bill Ashcroft teaches at the University of New South Wales, Australia, Gareth Griffiths at the University at Albany, USA and Helen Tiffin at the University of Queensland. All three have published widely in post-colonial studies, and together edited the ground-breaking Post-Colonial Studies Reader (1994) and wrote Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies (1998).