Empire and Poetic Voice: Cognitive and Cultural Studies of Literary Tradition and Colonialism

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction Decolonizing Literary Identity 1 1. Ideological Ambiguities of “Writing Back”: Anita Desai and George Lamming in the Heart of Darkness 31 2. Revising Indigenous Precursors, Reimagining Social Ideals: Tagore’s The Home and the World and Va\lmêki’s Ra\ma\yan≥a 53 3. Subaltern Myths Drawn from the Colonizer: Dream on Monkey Mountain and the Revolutionary Jesus 91 4. Preserving the Voice of Ancestors: Yoruba Myth and Ritual in The Palm-Wine Drinkard 125 5. Outdoing the Colonizer: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Walcott 157 6. Indigenous Tradition and the Individual Talent: Agha Shahid Ali, Laila/Majnoon, and the Ghazal 197 Afterword “We Are All Africans”: The Universal Privacy of Tradition 227 Notes 237 Glossary of Selected Theoretical Concepts 243 Works Cited 257 Index 275 vii Contents ...