Synopses & Reviews
Reading a wide range of well known postcolonial writers along with more recent authors, Spaces of Fiction / Fictions of Space implements a new theory of literary spatial marking derived from the linguistic theory of deixis, and made accessible via an analysis of Becketts 'semi-colonial' play Waiting for Godot.
Synopsis
Spaces of Fiction / Fictions of Space discusses the ways in which literary texts from the colonial to the postcolonial periods have presented the spaces of the postcolonial world. It reads a wide range of well-known postcolonial such as Achebe, Chamoiseau, Conrad, Forster, Glissant, Gordimer Naipaul, Ngugi, or Walcott along with more recent authors: Dabydeen, Desai, Grenville, Malouf, Mda, Ondaatje, Roy, Warner, Wicomb, Wright and others. The book scrutinizes the literary texture of spatial description across the entire breath of African, Australian, Canadian, Caribbean and Indian literature, also taking in the Francophone domain. Spaces of Fiction / Fictions of Space implements a new theory of literary spatial marking derived from the linguistic theory of deixis, and made accessible via an analysis of Beckett's 'semi-colonial' play Waiting for Godot. The study discusses the literary representation of spatial experience from the colonial period via the post-independence period to more recent postcolonial writing, concluding with a particular focus upon indigenous story-telling and the poetics of place.
About the Author
RUSSELL WEST-PAVLOV is Professor of Postcolonial Literatures at the Free University of Berlin, Germany.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Notes on Translations
Introduction: Deixis - Borges/Calvino
PART I: THE SPACES OF FICTION
Deixis and I - Beckett I
From Deictics to DeiXis - Beckett II
Narrative Space - Conrad I/Gide/Kristeva/Shklovsky
Anadiplosis - Conrad II/Dabydeen/Wolf
PART II: THE FICTIONS OF SPACE
Spatial Amnesia - Ondaatje/Desai
Imperial Deixis - Naipaul/Dunbar/Keats/Kipling/Csaire/Rhys/Roy/Rushdie
Self-Reflexive Deixis And The Aporias Of The Nation - Mcfarlane/Achebe/Ngugi
Critiques Of National Narratives - Davison/Fanon/Kourouma/Wicomb/Vassanji
Deixis And Loss - Muecke/Fatoba/Naipaul/Warner/Chamoiseau/Glissant
Deixis Rediscovered - Malouf/Forster/Ondaatje/Scott/Neidjie
Conclusion: 'here fix the tablet' - Field/Grenville
Bibliography
Index