What is it about?
This history covers four centuries of black and Asian British writing from the eighteenth century to the present. It provides contextualised introductions to a wide range of writers, exploring form, style and genre within necessary social, political and cultural contexts, identifying persistent themes and the recurrent need to negotiate questions of race, class and gender.
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Why is it important?
• First substantial documentation of a black and Asian literary history from the eighteenth century to the present • To create a more inclusive narrative of British literary history • To present the history of the evolution of black and Asian British writing drawing attention to its political and cultural contexts including material practices such as publishing, impact of reception, ways of reading (literary and cultural theory) • Expose the often overlooked diversity of the history of British writing • Offer sustained critical, theoretical, and scholarly analysis of a broad range of writing and genres; from works by Nobel prize winners to little-known and sometimes overlooked authors
Perspectives
This first substantive history of black and Asian British writing provides an overview of the diverse literary traditions impacting on this field’s evolution, from the eighteenth century to the present. Drawing on the expertise of over forty international scholars, the history gathers innovative scholarship to look forward to new readings and perspectives, while also focussing on undervalued writers, texts, and research areas. Creating new pathways to engage with the naming of a field that has often been contested, readings of literary texts are interwoven throughout with key political, social, and material contexts. In making visible the diverse influences constituting past and contemporary British literary culture, this major Cambridge History makes a unique contribution to British, Commonwealth, postcolonial, transnational, and global literary studies, serving both as the first major reference work to cover four centuries of black and Asian British literary history as well as a compass for future scholarship.
Prof. Mark U. Stein, PhD
Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat Munster
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing, December 2019, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/9781108164146.
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