Starting with a re-examination of the role of the colonial/racial Other in mainstream Gothic (colonial) fiction, this book goes on to engage with the problem of narrating the ‘subaltern’ in the post-colonial context. It engages with the problems of representing ‘difference’ in lucid conceptual terms, with much attention to primary texts, and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of colonial discourses as well as postcolonialist attempts to ‘write back.’ While providing rich readings of Conrad, Kipling, Melville, Emily Brontë, Erna Brodber, Jean Rhys and others, it offers new perspectives on Otherness, difference and identity, re-examines the role of emotions in literature, and suggests productive ways of engaging with contemporary global and postcolonial issues.
Table of Content
Acknowledgements Introduction: The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness PART I: THE GOTHIC AND OTHERNESS Ghosts from the Colonies The Devil and the Racial Other Heathcliff as Terrorist Smoke and Darkness: The Heart of Conrad Emotions and the Gothic PART II: POSTCOLONIALISM AND OTHERNESS Can the Other Speak? Negotiating Vodou: Some Caribbean Narratives of Otherness Can the ‘Other half’ be told?: Brodber’s Myal The Option of Magical Realism Narration, Literary Language and the Post/Colonial Conclusion: Summing Up Notes Index
About the author
Tabish Khair is Associate Professor at Aarhus University, Denmark. A novelist, poet, journalist and scholar, he was born and educated in India. His novels and poems have won various awards, and his critical studies have marked crucial interventions in Indian English literature, postcolonialism, Gothic fiction, and the study of xenophobia.
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