Novel in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific since 1950

Description

This volume offers a comprehensive account of the production of English language novels and related prose fiction since 1950 in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. After the Second World War, the rise of cultural nationalism in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and movements towards independence in the Pacific islands, together with the turn toward multiculturalism and transnationalism in the postcolonial world, has called into question the standard national frames for literary history. This has resulted in an increasing recognition of formerly marginalised peoples and a repositioning of these national literatures in a world literary context. This multi-authored volume explores the implications of such radical change through its focus on the novel and the short story, which model the crises in evolving narratives of nationhood and the reinvention of postcolonial identities. The constant interplay between national and regional specificity and transnational linkages is mirrored in the structure of this volume, where parallel sections on national literatures are situated within a broadly inclusive comparative framework. Shifting socio-political and cultural contexts and their effects on novels and novelists, together with shifts in literary genres (realism, modernism, the Gothic, postmodernism) are traced across these different regions. Attention is given not only to major authors but also to Indigenous and multicultural fiction , children's and young adult novels, and popular fiction. A significant feature of this volume is its extensive treatment of the novel in the South Pacific. Chapters on book publishing, critical reception, and literary histories for all four areas are included in this innovative presentation of a TransPacific postcolonial history of the novel.

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