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The author's interest in Commonwealth Literature is grounded in a concern about the place of English in post-colonial Malta. The writing of those who have been, like the Maltese, through the process of renegotiating their identity through and beyond Independence is of particular interest to our students. In addition, the fact that the author teaches English Colonial, Australian and African Literature within the Department of English has shown her how quick Maltese students are to grasp different aspects of identity construction in the work of these writers. An exploration of myth and history in Commonwealth Literature showed that the traditional European opposition between mythological thought and historic vision was untenable vis-a-vis the writer's practice in Africa, Australia and other Commonwealth countries. Writers such as Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Wole Soyinka, Patrick White and Randolph Stow often show a mythopoeic sensibility as well as political consciousness. Such writers utilise myth but do not allow their novels to move outside a time referent. They project indigenous religions with their gods and rituals but remain grounded in their society's actual situation, which they are fully committed to ameliorate. ; peer-reviewed

All the major critics of postwar literature regard the fifties as a period in which literature was inept, conservative and conformist. This thesis argues that fifties literature was instead an active and successful agent in problematising conservative political orthodoxies, and in articulating alternative identities and politics. The study is concerned with two major themes: the relationship between literature and history, and the critical reputation and location of literature in nineteen-fifties Britain. It begins from positions that are already evident in postwar literary criticism towards both of these themes. Literature is understood in much of the critical writing of postwar Britain to be representative of social trends and attitudes, and its meaning is determined largely according to particular understandings of postwar British history and society. The literary text, if understood as 'representative', is capable of offering the reader direct access to the society of its production, and of reflecting the dominant trends and attitudes in a given period. Because it is the most recent period of realism in the history of English literature, the fifties seem to be particularly susceptible to this view. Reading fifties literature in the light of poststructuralist thinking on textuality and representation, this study argues that literature is not representative bu negotiates identities and social experiences of the fifties in a much more diverse way. These negotiations are demonstrated in readings of the work of John Osborne, Brendan Behan and Sam Selvon, and elaborated theoretically in the concluding chapters of the study. Literature's Poor Relation demonstrates that fifties literature is able to manoeuvre into a space wherein it can articulate oppositional and critical stances towards power, by firstly, imitating social detail and literary traditions, and secondly, reading these details and traditions in such was as to deconstruct them. The appearance of representativeness serves to seduce the reader into desiring the text (the idea that Look Back in Anger was representative attracted many of its original audiences to see it), and its readings and interpretations of history and identity deflect the reader's desire towards oppositional and critical moments in the text.

Machine generated contents note: I OPENING THE FIELD -- 1 British history and 'The British history': the same old story? -- Philip Schwyzer -- 2 Revising criticism: Ireland and the British model -- Andrew Murphy --II CONTESTED PERIPHERIES -- 3 'The lost British lamb': English Catholic exiles and the problem of Britain -- Christopher Highley -- 4 Making history: Holinshed's Irish Chronicles, 1577 and 1587 -- Richard A. McCabe --III BRITISH SHAKESPEARE -- 5 Henry IV: metatheatrical Britain -- Matthew Greenfield -- 6 Uncertain unions: Welsh leeks in Henry V -- Patricia Parker -- 7 Delving to the root: Cymbeline, Scotland, and the English race -- Mary Floyd- Wilson --IV UNION QUESTIONS -- 8 Reinventing the matter of Britain: undermining the state in Jacobean masques -- Philippa Berry and Jayne Elisabeth Archer -- 9 'Mapping British identities: Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine -- Christopher Ivic --V BRITAIN'S BRAVE NEW WORLD -- 10 Bruited abroad:John White and Thomas Harriot's colonial representations of ancient Britain -- Andrew Hadfield -- 11 The commonwealth of the word: New England, Old England, and the praying Indians -- Linda Gregerson --VI RESTORING BRITAIN -- 12 Orrery's Ireland and the British problem, 1641-1679 -- John Kerrigan -- 13 Jacobite literature and national identities -- Murray Pittock -- VII HISTORIANS RESPOND -- 14 Literature and the new British and Irish histories -- Jane Ohlmeyer -- 15 Text, time, and the pursuit of 'British identities' -- Derek Hirst

"Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature explores the relationship between ideology and subjectivity surrounding a single class/estate group and its characteristic sins in the context of literary texts influenced by estates satire. This book focuses in depth on both large works by well-known authors and lesser-studied works, including The Canterbury Tales, Piers Plowman, Gower's Mirour de l'Omme, The Book of Margery Kempe, The York Plays, The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, "The Childe of Bristowe," and the Pseudo-Chaucerian "Tale of Beryn." Its approach documents the trajectory of antimercantile ideology under the pressures of the major developments made in economic theory and practice in the later Middle Ages"--

"The Routledge Companion to Politics and Literature in English provides an interdisciplinary overview of the vibrant connections between literature, politics, and the political. Featuring contributions from 41 scholars across a variety of disciplines, the collection is divided into five parts: Connecting Literature and Politics; Constituting the Polis; Periods and Histories; Media, Genre, and Techne; and Spaces. Organised around familiar concepts - such as humans, animals, workers, empires, nations and states - rather than theoretical schools, it will help readers to understand the ways in which literature affects our understanding of who is capable of political action, who has been included in and excluded from politics, and how different spaces are imagined to be political. It also offers a series of engagements with key moments in literary and political history from 1066 to the present in order to assess and reassess the utility of conventional modes of periodization. The book extends current discussions in the area, looking at cutting-edge developments in the discipline of literary studies as a whole which will appeal to academics and researchers seeking to orient their own interventions into broader contexts"--

Introduction: Debating English -- Part One: Managing English -- Chapter One: Pioneers and Heretics -- Chapter Two: Vocabulary Control and Colonialism -- Chapter Three: Literary Simplification and the Global Subject -- Part Two: Making English -- Chapter Four: Basic's Critics and World English -- Chapter Five: The Carnegie Conference and Its Discontents -- Conclusion -- Bibliography.

Scandalous Bodies is an impassioned scholarly study both of literature by diasporic writers and of the contexts within which it is produced. It explores topics ranging from the Canadian government's multiculturalism policy to media representations of so-called minority groups, from the relationship between realist fiction and history to postmodern constructions of ethnicity, from the multicultural theory of the philosopher Charles Taylor to the cultural responsibilities of diasporic critics such as Kamboureli herself. Smaro Kamboureli proposes no neat or comforting solutions to the problems.

"This interdisciplinary collection is a first step in the process of dismantling the imperial and unionist dominance of the discipline of English Literature and building a literary history and national literature of England. The collection brings together some of the best known and most incisive commentators on England, Englishness and English Literature from political and literary fields in order to rethink the relationship between Britain, England and English literary culture. It is premised on the importance of devolution, the uncertainty of the British Union, the place of English Literature within the Union, and the need for England to become a self-determining literary nation. The collection comprises fifteen essays, organised into four parts, moving from political discussions of the form of a devolved or independent England, through a consideration of England in canonical and contemporary literature, to an exploration of the role of the national in English Literature's disciplinary logic"--

Despite an unprecedented level of interest in the interaction between law and literature over the past two decades, readers have had no accessible introduction to this rich engagement in medieval and early Tudor England. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature addresses this need by combining an authoritative guide through the bewildering maze of medieval law with concise examples illustrating how the law infiltrated literary texts during this period. Foundational chapters written by leading specialists in legal history prepare readers to be guided by noted literary scholars through unexpected conversations with the law found in numerous medieval texts, including major works by Chaucer, Langland, Gower, and Malory. Part I contains detailed introductions to legal concepts, practices and institutions in medieval England, and Part II covers medieval texts and authors whose verse and prose can be understood as engaging with the law