Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature
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Examining Canonisation in Modern African Literature
Get PDFThis essay examines the idea of an African literary canon through the creative works of African writers, their criticism by African literary scholars, and the validation of African aesthetic values. Based on the premise that literature is a cultural production, modern African literature expresses the socio-cultural, historical, and other experiences as well as the sensibility of its people. Literary works that focus on certain criteria of cultural acceptability, African-ness, or Africanity constitute modern African literature and its canon. Since modern African literature is still relatively young compared to Western literatures, there have been debates and controversies over what is truly African literature. It is in the context of the people’s overall experience and the aesthetic considerations involved that canonisation will be discussed. Among these issues are the language of modern African literature and the current debate as to whether African writers in the West (North America and Europe) writing and publishing there are still African writers. Cultural identity and what constitutes what Abiola Irele describes as “the African imagination†will thus be the touchstones of any African literary canon. As a result of the postcolonial experience shared by many African and Asian societies, many of the issues relating to African literature and its canon will likely have parallel responses in modern Asian literary discourse.Â
Words Over Borders: Trafficking Literatures in Southeast Asia
Get PDFThis paper traces the paths of literary works that cross linguistic and cultural borders, and have been adopted into the receiving cultures. Their sources may be as far away as India, or as close as Java and the Malay Peninsula, but have spread and later become well-loved local stories and poems as they provide genres and forms to be emulated and enjoyed. From India came the Ramayana, which travelled to Thailand, Cambodia, and Java, and from Java to the Malay Peninsula and Patani. From the Malay Peninsula and/or Sumatra the pantun marched into the other islands of the Archipelago, was brought to Sri Lanka and also South Africa, and in the 19th century to Europe. The romantic Javanese Panji story caught the imagination of Malay and Patani performers who took it to Ayuthia. These texts were thus translated, transformed, and adapted in a wide literary area, resulting in not only various literary performances but also in related arts
Enriching Knowledge by Publishing in the Regional languages
Get PDFLiterary publishing in the Philippine regional languages – such as Iluko, Cebuano, Kapampangan, and Bikol – have existed since the sixteenth century. In recent years, the development of literature in the regions was largely helped by writers groups, independent publishers, and writers workshops. Publication in Manila also helped popularise these works – but for this, the writers had to write in either English or Filipino. Books published in the regions are generally available only in these places and have a very limited circulation. There is a need to sustain writing in the regional languages, and to encourage the writing of criticism and critical frameworks for each regional literature. The absence of a critical consciousness in literature could be an indication of a lack of a passion for truth and a viable intellectual climate in the country. In this situation, the work of the publishing industry in creating new knowledge gains new meaning and value.Â
“The Train Has Moved Onâ€: R.K. Narayan’s The Guide and Literary History
No full textThe critical reception of R.K. Narayan’s fourteen novels over a period of more than half a century has established him as the most popular of the three founding fathers of the modern Indian novel in English. Nearly 900 publications – monographs and essay collections, contributions to learned journals and magazines, reviews of single works in diverse media, and filmed versions of at least two works – exceed by far the attention paid to Mulk Raj Anand, or Raja Rao’s achievement. They testify, besides, to the sustained interest in Narayan’s narrative oeuvre that ranges from Swami and Friends (1935) to The World of Nagaraj (1989). An overview will give an idea of the number of critical responses during the periods 1935-1970, the 1970s, the 1980s, and 1990-2004. Besides, it will permit a close look at The Guide (1958), Narayan’s most popular novel. Its literary innovative features will show that this story, though embedded in the intermediate period between the late colonial and the early independence years in India, is a forerunner of the post-1980s Indian novel in English. Â
