Renaissance Literature and Postcolonial Studies (Postcolonial Literary Studies) - Hardcover

Shankar Raman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0748636838 ISBN 13: 9780748636839

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Treating the Renaissance as also the period that saw the birth of European colonialism, this book focuses on the interplay between the discovery of new lands and the re-discovery of old texts. It describes the parallel emergence of colonialism and its critique, and traces the persistence of a dynamic relationship between the colonial and the postcolonial in contemporary literary criticism. In surveying a range of early modern texts and contemporary critical debates surrounding them, it insists upon diversity and difference, attending to the multiple origins and trajectories that characterize both the colonial and the postcolonial. Its detailed case studies of canonical and non-canonical texts, drawn from a variety of genres, offer careful reconstructions of key contexts - such as court versus mercantile culture or intra-European rivalry - and central issues, such as ethnicity, class and gender and the ideological uses of the past. Throughout, the book stresses the complex place of literature and literary form in negotiating historical ruptures in the past and the present. Key Features * Provides an overview of theories of colonialism and postcolonialism, with particular emphasis on their application to Renaissance literature * Discusses a range of European literatures that reflect and shape the processes of imperial expansion and colonization * Contextualizes canonical works by such authors as Shakespeare and Milton in terms both of early modern discourses of colonialism and from contemporary postcolonial perspectives * Offers cogent introductions to central debates and interventions in colonial and postcolonial studies that have emerged from and shaped our understanding of Renaissance literature

About this title

About the Author

Shankar Raman is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Literature at MIT. He is the author of Framing "India": The Colonial Imaginary in Early Modern Culture (Stanford University Press, 2002).

From the Back Cover

AUTHOR APPROVED BLURB Postcolonial Literary Studies Series Editors: David Johnson and Ania Loomba This series examines how Postcolonial Studies reconfigures the major periods and areas of literature. The books relate key literary and cultural texts both to their historical and geographical contexts, and to contemporary issues of neo-colonialism and global inequality. Each volume provides a comprehensive survey of the existing field of scholarship and debate, and is also an original intervention in its own right. Each book includes: a time line; an introductory literature survey; discussion of critical, theoretical, historical and political debates; exemplary critical readings of literary texts; and further reading. Renaissance Literature and Postcolonial Studies Shankar Raman Shows how Renaissance writers and artists struggled to reconcile past traditions with experiences of 'discovery' In what ways have colonial and postcolonial studies transformed our perceptions of early modern European texts and images? How have those perceptions enriched our broader understanding of the colonial and the postcolonial? Focusing on English, Portuguese, Spanish and French colonial projects, Shankar Raman explains how encounters with new worlds and peoples irrevocably shaped both Europeans and their 'others'. There are in-depth case studies on: the Portuguese drama and epic of Gil Vicente and Luis Vaz de Camões; travel narratives and exotic engravings from Theodore de Bry's influential compilations; and the English plays and verse of Christopher Marlowe, John Donne and Richard Brome. Key Features * Introduces readers to the careful reading of visual sources as a complement to textual analysis * Emphasises the importance of comparative work in literary studies of colonialism: see especially the discussion of Adam Olearius' travels in Chapter 2 as well as the case studies of Portuguese literary texts and de Bry Shankar Raman is an Associate Professor in the Literature Fac

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0748636838
• ISBN 13: 9780748636839
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224