Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. ...
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Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.Less
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter One examines the relationship between metropolitan and colonial writers at midcentury. It discusses the BBC as a model of a metropolitan cultural institution that promoted collaboration ...
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Chapter One examines the relationship between metropolitan and colonial writers at midcentury. It discusses the BBC as a model of a metropolitan cultural institution that promoted collaboration between metropolitan intellectuals and their colonial counterparts. It argues that aesthetic autonomy was a key modernist doctrine that facilitated cooperation across the racial divide. Black, colonial writers, this chapter contends, were instrumental in explaining the relevance of modernist aesthetics to a decolonizing world, using the concept of aesthetic autonomy to insist that the sphere of high literature could transcend the injustices of a colonial system based on racial discrimination.Less
Chapter One examines the relationship between metropolitan and colonial writers at midcentury. It discusses the BBC as a model of a metropolitan cultural institution that promoted collaboration between metropolitan intellectuals and their colonial counterparts. It argues that aesthetic autonomy was a key modernist doctrine that facilitated cooperation across the racial divide. Black, colonial writers, this chapter contends, were instrumental in explaining the relevance of modernist aesthetics to a decolonizing world, using the concept of aesthetic autonomy to insist that the sphere of high literature could transcend the injustices of a colonial system based on racial discrimination.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, ...
More
Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, however, she disappeared, staging an improbable comeback in the 1960s, culminating in the release of Wide Sargasso Sea and the republication of her earlier fiction. In those intervening years, however, a number of high-profile Caribbean writers had come to the attention of metropolitan critics and audiences. This chapter situates Rhys's changing depictions of racial difference in this long context, exploring the subtle continuities and equally subtle differences between her interwar fiction and her postcolonial writing.Less
Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, however, she disappeared, staging an improbable comeback in the 1960s, culminating in the release of Wide Sargasso Sea and the republication of her earlier fiction. In those intervening years, however, a number of high-profile Caribbean writers had come to the attention of metropolitan critics and audiences. This chapter situates Rhys's changing depictions of racial difference in this long context, exploring the subtle continuities and equally subtle differences between her interwar fiction and her postcolonial writing.
