1st Edition

Minor Genres in Postcolonial Literatures

Edited By Delphine Munos, Bénédicte Ledent Copyright 2019
    146 Pages
    by Routledge

    146 Pages
    by Routledge

    Moving beyond the postcolonial literature field’s traditional focus on the novel, this book shines a light on the "minor" genres in which postcolonial issues are also explored.



    The contributors examine the intersection of generic issues with postcolonial realities in regions such as South Africa, Nigeria, New Zealand, Indonesia, Australia, the United Kingdon, and the Caribbean. These "minor" genres include crime fiction, letter writing, radio plays, poetry, the novel in verse and short stories, as well as blogs and essays. The volume closes with Robert Antoni’s discussion of his use of the vernacular and digital resources in As Flies to Whatless Boys (2013), and suggests that "major" genres might yield new webs of meaning when digital media are mobilized with a view to creating new forms of hybridity and multiplicity that push genre boundaries.



    In focusing on underrepresented and understudied genres, this book pays justice to the multiplicity of the field of postcolonial studies and gives voice to certain literary traditions within which the novel occupies a less central position.



     This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

    Introduction – "Minor" genres in postcolonial literatures: New webs of meaning  1. "The advent of a genre": Crime fiction and the state of the nation in South Africa  2. From Jay to Bee to Daughter Buffalo: Outlining ekphrasis in the work of Janet Frame  3. Radio drama and its avatars in the work of Caryl Phillips  4. The tremors of genre in G.J. Resink’s poetry  5. "Keeping my slave side well versed": Fred D’Aguiar’s use of ottava rima in Bloodlines  6. The danger of a single short story: Reality, fiction and metafiction in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s "Jumping Monkey Hill"  7. Twisting the Australian realist short story: Murray Bail’s "Camouflage"  8. Minor genres and marginal realities: Kei Miller’s blog posts and Facebook notes  9. Claiming a hybrid language, seeking a hybrid form: From the vernacular to digital media in Robert Antoni’s As Flies to Whatless Boys (2013)

    Biography

    Delphine Munos is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Researcher in the Institute for English and American Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany.



    Bénédicte Ledent is a Professor of English at the University of Liège, Belgium, and is codirector of the Postcolonial Research Group CEREP.