This essay, which examines the anxiety of influence of the postcolonial English-language novel, focuses on texts constituted by metropolitan (Western, European) forms of the realist novel, albeit in a reactive mode. I claim that postcolonial revisions of canonical novels reinvent the Eurocentric canon for a global age while enacting the death of the romance of the novel. The essay has three parts: the first examines V. S. Naipaul's vexed identification with and shadowing of Joseph Conrad; the second discusses J. M. Coetzee's deconstructive interpretation of the national and cultural provenance of the classic English novel; and the third explores contestations around questions of canonicity, fictionality, and the historical embeddedness of postcolonial novels.
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December 1, 2008
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Research Article|
December 01 2008
The Death of the Novel and Two Postcolonial Writers
Modern Language Quarterly (2008) 69 (4): 533–556.
Citation
Ankhi Mukherjee; The Death of the Novel and Two Postcolonial Writers. Modern Language Quarterly 1 December 2008; 69 (4): 533–556. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00267929-2008-015
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