BOOK 4

L201B ENGLISH IN THE WORLD

Chapter 18
English literature in the world
David Johnson
 Introduction
• The chapter considers the body of literary works by writers in English
from non-Anglophone countries – the literary works by writers in
English from non-English dominant countries.
• These literary works are a consequence of a global spread of the
English language that accompanied the British Empire in the
nineteenth century and the American Empire in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries.
• The economic, political and military conflicts that characterize the
colonial and postcolonial histories of the British and American
empires extend to the literatures and literary debates of former
colonies.

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 Key discussion points
Chronological Order
• The original models of the national literary ‘canon’, those
literary Works valued most highly, originating in
eighteenth-century Europe.
• How the English literary canon travelled to non-
Anglophone countries under colonial rule in India
• Case studies focusing on literary canons in non-Anglophone
nations in the postcolonial period, e.g. India, Kenya and
South Africa.
• The future of literary canons, addressing recent debates in
the United States.

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 What is ‘English literature’?
•The answer lies not in England as expected
but in eighteenth century Germany, where an
influential generation of philosophers insisted
on the connection between the rise of
modern nation states, national languages and
national literatures. Johan Gottfried Herder
(1744 – 1803) expressed the intimate bond
between Nation-Language- Literature by
emphasizing certain key aspects in some
questions he asks.

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 What is ‘English literature’?
The term embodies two elements:
Literature – including the traditional genres of poetry, drama
and fiction
English- where the concept of a national literature came to
be bound to national identity and national language.
The concept of English literature did not start in England but
in 18th century Germany with the philosopher Herder who
introduced the concept of a national literature,
Nationallitteratur.
The eighteenth-century German roots of the definition of ‘English
literature’, as well as the subsequent national and colonial histories of
European literatures, suggest that the English literary canon is in fact
not a ‘natural’ cultural formation; rather, it is the product of a long,
contradictory, and contested historical process, often related to political
issues.
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 What is ‘English literature’?
So the concepts of regulation, love of the nation,
excellent thoughts and treasure guide for the
culture, as well as English literature being a
bonding force for the nation and the those
colonized in by the British empire are very
important.
With these values in mind comes the idea of criteria
for choosing what literature is to be included in the
canon, based on both aesthetic values of literature,
that is the style, as well as on the thoughts,
content, moral and cultural values expressed in this
literature.
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 What is the literary canon?

The canon is the collection of

authoritative and exclusive great texts
that are considered worthy of being read.
• The way these texts are chosen depends on both the
style and the content, or as Trevelyan puts it on: the
‘manner’ and the ‘matter,’ mainly on social and political
considerations related to the purpose the canon is
supposed to serve at a certain period of the history of a
language and of a particular society.
With any definition of “English Literature” lies the question
of ‘How do we decide which writers or literary texts should
be included under the definition of ‘English Literature’?
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 What is English Literature?
• Some of the key names that come on the list of most
people as part of the English literary canon or English
Literature are:
*William Shakespeare *John Milton
*Jane Austen *William Wordsworth
*Charles Dickens *Virginia Woolf
*Geoffrey Chaucer *Christopher Marlowe,
*Daniel Defoe *Blake/Coleridge/Byron/
*Shelley/ Keats *The Bronte Sisters
*George Eliot *W. H. Auden
Or Kazuo Ishiguro

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What is English Literature?
Can the works of writers from Scotland, Wales or
Ireland (and therefore not strictly ‘English’) be
added to your list – writers like James Joyce,
Robert Burns or Dylan Thomas?
Can the works of writers from England who did not
write in the English language – like Cornish-
language dramatists or poets of the Middle Ages –
also be included?

Can writers from Britain’s colonies, such as Olive

Schreiner or Katherine Mansfield, be included?

Does English literature refer only to recognized

‘great writers’ of the past, or can popular
contemporary writers like J. K. Rowling, Hilary
Mantel or Stephen King be included?
Can writers from Britain’s ex-colonies like
Chinua Achebe or Linton Kwesi Johnson
be classed as English literature?
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The canonization of Shakespeare:

• The conventional wisdom is that Shakespeare’s

plays and poetry have always enjoyed
universal acclaim. However, a more careful
look at the history of Shakespeare’s journey to
the summit of the English literary canon
suggests a more complicated and contradictory
story.

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Three stages in Shakespeare’s rise can be
identified as:

successful playwright

successful playwright

Universal Genius

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Stage one: successful playwright:

• During his own lifetime (1564-1616), Shakespeare

enjoyed popularity as a playwright, but after his death,
and especially in the final third of the seventeenth
century, his reputation declined.

 By the end of the seventeenth century, Shakespeare

was regarded as one of a number of talented English
playwrights, and he contributed as one-among-many
to English theatre companies’ repertoires.

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 Stage two: national playwright:
• The eighteenth century saw a rise in Shakespeare’s reputation
and by about 1750, he was established as the ‘national
playwright’. Two contexts were especially important in
establishing Shakespeare’s pre-eminence, namely the
theatres, and the literary magazines and newspapers
reviewing his plays.
 Theatre audiences expanded rapidly in the eighteenth
century, as the number and size of the theatres
increased. The link between nation and literature was
especially strong in the theatres in moments of political
crisis.
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Stage two: national playwright:
• Monuments to Shakespeare were erected in
places of national importance, and
Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon,
became a site of secular pilgrimage after 1769.

 By the end of the eighteenth century,

Shakespeare had become England’s greatest
literary asset, a source of unqualified national
pride.
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Stage three: Universal Genius:

• Shakespeare’s stature was enhanced even further by intellectual

developments in late eighteenth-century Germany.

 The establishment view was that only the literature of

antiquity, and particularly Homer and Virgil, deserved the title
of Universal Literature. The German Romantics attacked this
view, and pressed the claims of modern literature, with
Shakespeare thrust forward as the most persuasive example
of a modern writer worthy of the title Universal Genius.

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Stage three: Universal Genius:

• That Shakespeare wrote in the English language was no barrier to

these young German critics recruiting him in their battle against
literary-critical orthodoxy.

English Romantic poets and critics like Samuel Taylor happily

accepted German applause for Shakespeare and popularized his
ascension to the status of Universal Genius.

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The canonization of Shakespeare – Details of context
The canonization of Shakespeare is an example of how the literary
canon is the product of a length and contested historical process
(pp..84-5)
Three stages in Shakespeare’s rise can be identified.
• Stage one: successful playwright
During his own lifetime (1564-1616), Shakespeare enjoyed popularity
as a playwright, but after his death, and especially in the final third
of the seventeenth century, his reputation declined. During the
English Civil War (1640-51), the London theatres were closed, but
were reopened with the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. The
Crown patronised the theatre directly, and the task of the royal
theatre companies was to stage plays that would ‘convince both
Charles ll and his theatre-going Subjects that the English Revolution
had indeed not taken place’ (Dobson, 1992, p; 20). So,
Shakespeare’s King Henry IV was staged (it contained a scene about
quelling a rebellion). By the end of the seventeenth century,
Shakespeare was regarded as one of a number of talented English
playwrights, while focus was on other more entertaining dramatists.
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The canonization of Shakespeare
The canonization of Shakespeare is an example of how the literary canon is the
product of a length and contested historical process (pp.85-6)
• Stage two: national playwright
-The eighteenth century saw a rise in Shakespeare’s reputation, and by about
1750, he was established as the National Playwright. Two contexts were
especially important in establishing Shakespeare’s pre-eminence, namely the
theatres, and the literary magazines and newspapers reviewing his plays.
Theatre audiences expanded rapidly in the eighteenth century, as the number
and size of the theatres increased.
- The link between ‘nation’ and ‘literature’ was especially strong in the theatres
in moments of political crisis.
- As in the theatres, so too in the reviews, a strong sense of national pride is evident.
Shakespeare was at least the equal of - if not better than - the classical Greek and
Roman writers; in 1760, a Professor of Greek at Cambridge declared that the
“immortal and inimitable Shakespeare [sic] surpassed ‘the excellencies of
AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides’ (Taylor, 1990, p. 114). and Shakespeare’s
birthplace, Stratford- upon-Avon, became a site of secular pilgrimage after 1769. By
the end of the eighteenth century, Shakespeare had become England’s greatest
literary asset, a source of unqualified national pride.
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The canonization of Shakespeare
• Stage three: Universal Genius (p.86)
Shakespeare’s stature was enhanced even further by intellectual developments in late eighteenth-
century Germany. The German Romantics were involved in a bitter polemic with a conservative
establishment that venerated the Greek and Roman classics and spurned all modern literatures in
modern European languages. The establishment view was that only the literature of antiquity, and
particularly Homer and Virgil, deserved the title of Universal Literature. The German Romantics
attacked this view and pressed the claims of modern literature, with Shakespeare thrust forward as
the most persuasive example of a ‘modern’ writer worthy of the title Universal Genius. That
Shakespeare wrote in the English language was no barrier to these young German critics recruiting
him in their battle against literary- critical orthodoxy. The next generation of German Romantics
shared Goethe’s love of Shakespeare. A. W von Schlegel, for example, described Shakespeare as ‘a
profound artist [Who] has reflected, and deeply reflected, on character and passion, on the
progress of events and human destinies, on the human constitution, on all the things and relations
of the World’ (von Schlegel, i346 [l8l5], pp. 358-9). English Romantic poets and critics like Samuel
Taylor Coleridge happily accepted German applause for Shakespeare, and popularised his ascension
to the status of Universal Genius.
• People may oscillate about whether or not Shakespeare is the genius writer or not , some of which is
based on whether one has experienced Shakespeare in a class in school or college – found it difficult
and challenging or get inspired, or whether someone experienced ‘having goose-bumps in the
theatre’ when watching particular scenes from Shakespeare performed.
David Johnson, author of chapter 5, also refers to and his experiences as a teacher in
Africa trying to help English school pupils whose first language wasn’t English understand enough
Shakespeare to pass their examinations when [he]often felt part of postcolonial education apparatus
dedicated to enforcing Shakespeare’s ‘universality’)_ What these conflicting responses suggest is that
no simple or dogmatic answer (about the universal genius of Shakespeare) is possible
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The English literary canon and colonialism:

• Having examined the emergence of the English literary

canon in Britain itself, we turn now to an example of
English literature to non-Anglophone nations under
Britain’s colonial empire.

• Under
India colonial rule
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2 Literary
canons in
India
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 2 Literary canons in India
India under colonial rule

• To analyze the travels of the English literary canon to non-Anglophone contexts requires
both an appreciation of the affective power of literature, and an understanding of the
social, political and educational mission of English literature beyond Britain’s borders .
• The late eighteenth century was a period of relative tolerance and cultural empathy
on the part of the British colonizers in India. British rule under Warren Hastings
(1732–1818), the governor-general from 1774 to 1785, was guided by an official
policy known as Orientalism. Dictated partly by expediency, Hastings believed that
British colonial officials were insufficiently informed about Indian languages,
cultures, and traditions, and he accordingly promoted ‘a tacit policy of what one
might call reverse acculturation, whose goal was to train British administrators and
civil servants to fit into the culture of the ruled and to assimilate them thoroughly
into the native way of life’ (Viswanathan, 1989, p. 28). At this stage, there was
therefore little attempt by the British to impose English literary works upon Indian
readers.
• After the impeachment of Hastings on charges of corruption, and his
replacement by Lord Cornwallis (1786-96), however, the policy of Orientalism
was challenged and gradually superseded by the alternative policy of Anglicism.
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 2 Literary canons in India
India under colonial rule
• Anglicism reacted against Orientalism by advocating Western (and particularly
English) culture at the expense of Eastern culture. Specifically, this meant that
English literature was to be promoted over Indian literatures, in its many
languages a policy the Anglicists justified on two grounds.
• First, they argued that English literature was simply better than Indian
literature, a sentiment vividly captured in Thomas Macaulay’s ‘Minute on
Indian Education’ (1835), in which he declared that ‘a single shelf of a good
European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia’
(quoted in Trivedi, 1993, p. 11).
• The second reason Britain’s colonial administrators promoted English
above Indian literature was to do with their need to educate and recruit
Indians to serve in the lower reaches of the colonial bureaucracy.
• The British officers introduced instead the teaching of English
Literature as a substitute for Bible-based instruction. Administrators like
Charles Trevelyan were convinced that ‘without ever looking into the
Bible one of those Natives must come to a considerable knowledge of it
merely from reading English Literature’ (Viswanathan, 1989, p. 94).
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 Nineteenth-century India:

Anglicism reacted against Orientalism by advocating Western

culture at the expense of Eastern culture. Specifically, this meant
that English literature was to be promoted over Indian literatures,
a policy the Anglicists justified on two grounds.
• they argued that English literature was
First simply better than Indian literature

• their need to educate and recruit Indians

Second to serve in the lower reaches of the
colonial bureaucracy.
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 2 Literary canons in India
India under colonial rule
• That the long-term impact of Anglicist policy on language and literature would ultimately be
beneficial to India is explained in the words of the colonial official Charles Trevelyan in 1836
(p.88).
The vernacular dialects of India, will, by the same process [of introducing the English
language and literature), be united among themselves. This diversity among languages is
one of the greatest living obstacles to improvement in lndia. But when English shall
everywhere be established as the language of education,when the vernacular literature shall
everywhere be formed from materials drawn from this source, and according to models
furnished by this prototype, a strong tendency to assimilation will be created. Both the
matter and the manner will be the same. Saturated from the same source, recast in the
same mould, with a common science, a common standard of taste, a common
nomenclature, the national languages as well as the national character will be
consolidated. {…]
We shall leave a united and enlightened nation where we found a people broken up into
sections and depressed by literary systems, designed much more with a view to check the
progress, than to promote the advance, of the human mind.
(quoted in Tharu, 1991, p. 166)
So according to Trevelyean, the two main rationales of using English in colonial settings were :
unification, improvement and enlightenment of India and its people.
The unity and national sense will be saturated in English literature both in terms of matter
and manner (here again the importance ofN. the criteria for choosing the texts and authors
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to be included in the literary canon, those who represented Englishness both in their
The 3 elements in Trevelyan’s
argument
a narrative of
a negative positive claims
progress which
characterizatio for the
insists on a
n of Indian progressive
journey from
linguistic and effects of the
Oriental
literary English
backwardness
diversity before language and
to Western
British rule literature
modernity
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 2 Literary canons in India
India under colonial rule
• Notwithstanding their differences over language policy, the Orientalists and the Anglicists
shared the same ambition: to recruit literate clerks and minor officials to administer the
colonial civil service. Ultimately, the Anglicists prevailed, and hence the teaching and
examining of English literature was institutionalized. Satisfied with the success of the Indian
experiment, British educators from the 1850s onward introduced English literature as an
examination subject in Britain for candidates seeking entry not only to the colonial service, but
also to other branches of the civil service and the professions. Seventeen such examinations in
English literature were in place by 1875. All demanded the memorizing of set literary texts,
with Shakespeare the most prominent author.

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The English literary canon and post-
colonialism
Postcolonial India

 Trevelyan and Macaulay’s plans for introducing an English

education in India failed to produce a docile pro-British Indian
workforce to help run the colony.
• Instead, in the years to follow, there were successive waves of resistance to British rule: the
British-Sikh Wars of 1845– 1846 and 1848–1849; the Great Indian Rebellion (the Indian Mutiny)
of 1857–1858; the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885; the Sikkim War of 1888; the
Indian National Congress campaign against the partition of Bengal in 1905; the establishment of
the All- India Muslim League in 1906; the Lucknow Pact between the Muslim League and Indian
National Congress in 1916; Gandhi’s all-India satyagraha (‘non-violent resistance’) campaign and
the Jallianwalla Bagh (Amritsar) protests and massacre in 1919; Gandhi’s Salt March and the civil
disobedience campaign in 1931; and the ‘Quit India’ movement from 1942, which sought through
strikes, demonstrations and mass protests to expel the British from India. India’s protracted anti-
colonial struggle culminated in independence from Britain in 1947.
The many decades of opposition to British rule in India up until independence did not, however,
forestall substantial continuities from colonial to postcolonial India. If Macaulay and Trevelyan’s
educational ambitions failed to secure Britain’s long-term political control of India, their
promotion of English language and literature proved more resilient. A striking feature of
postcolonial societies (not just India) has been the proliferation of literatures published in the
languages of the colonizers, with certain such N.writers
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like Salman Rushdie and Anita Desai in India
The English literary canon and post-
colonialism India , Kenya & South Africa

The military, political and economic anti-colonial struggles were accompanied by

cultural resistance to British rule, and in the immediate aftermath of independence,
there were efforts to replace the English literary canon with literary canons based on
local writers and their work.

(This may remind us of the reactions in colonized regions and areas towards the
English Language: nationalist reactions, where English was discarded as a language
of colonialism or was adopted as a medium of the struggle for independence)

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A postcolonial canon of Anglophone Indian literature
How do we explain the phenomenon of Indian writers continuing to use
English in the postcolonial period?
Part of the answer lies in the fact that far from declining after independence, English has flourished as
the language of the bureaucracy, commerce, education, law, and the media.
In the process, English has become pre-eminently the language of the Indian state’s expanding
professional and administrative classes. The identification of English with this elite class reinforces
two fundamental oppositions in Indian society.
First, the opposition of nation versus region, as English becomes the language of the Indian nation,
and all other languages are consigned to the status of regional languages. As the literary theorist Aijaz
Ahmad explains, ‘[t]he ‘national’ intelligentsia is now rooted much more decisively in English than in
any of the indigenous languages’ (Ahmad, 1992, p 76).
The second opposition is the one between the ruling class and the masses, as English ‘like any other
substantial structure of linguistic difference, is used in the processes of class formation and social
privilege’ (Ahmad 1992, p. 77).
• The ambition of Britain’s nineteenth-century colonial administrators to install English as the unifying
language in India has therefore succeeded in constituting an administrative elite to manage the
postcolonial nation-state. However, this success has been at a cost – the overwhelming majority
who speak and write in India’s many other languages are marginal to the literary and cultural
conversations carried out among India’s national intelligentsia. Colonial Britain’s associated
ambition to replace Indian vernacular literatures with English literature, however, has failed insofar as
it has been comprehensively superseded by the category of Indian literature. But this replacement
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of English by Indian literature is compromised by the fact that the ‘Indian literature’ circulated
A postcolonial canon of Anglophone Indian literature
• Since independence, a postcolonial canon of Anglophone Indian literature has been
consolidated. A recent chapter by the influential literary historian Rajeswari Sunder
Rajan published in Volume 10 of The Oxford history of the novel (2019) provides
an instructive example of canon-construction in process, as Rajan selects the most
significant Indian novels of the last 75 years. Rajan divides India’s post-
independence literary history into three stages.
In the first stage, the first 30 years under Nehru’s Indian National Congress,
Indian literary works were pre-occupied with questions of selfhood, cultural
identity and alienation, and the challenges of modernity and nation-formation.
The literary historian identifies the key works of this period: the later publications
of R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao and Mulk Raj Anand, all of whose focus shifted
after independence away from a concern with social reform towards more
introspective and spiritual themes; the novels and short stories of male writers
Aubrey Menen, Bhabani Bhattacharya, G. V. Desani, and several more – ‘all of
them negotiating in varying degrees both the politics of writing in English as well
as its stylistic limits and possibilities [...] but nationalist in their investment in the
culture, history, philosophy, and people of India’ (Rajan, 2019, p. 11); and, for
Rajan, the most significant group of new literary works, the novels and short
stories by female writers, notably Anita Desai, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Attia
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Hosain, and Nayantara Sahgal.
A postcolonial canon of Anglophone Indian literature
Two key dates mark the transition to the second stage, one political and one literary:,
namely 1975 (Indira Gandhi’s repressive state of emergency) and 1981 (the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s
children).
 Rajan argues that the influence of Midnight’s children cannot be over-stated. Rushdie’s novel was the catalyst for an
explosion in literary production in English in India, as the next generation of writers demonstrated a fresh confidence
and inventiveness, enjoying vastly increased readerships and wining literary prizes. Moreover, Midnight’s children
encapsulated a fundamental change in the relationship of India’s English-speaking middle classes to political power:
the terms of the relationship between the individual and the nation state changed in a way that impelled writers in
English, traditionally constituted as a ruling class, to redefine or at least perceive themselves as newly oppositional to
political authority.
(Rajan, 2019, p. 19).
 Whereas first-stage writers had wrestled with the contradictory impact of post-independence Indian
society on their characters, second-stage writers provided literary critiques of the postcolonial
Indian nation state. Emphasizing the variety of these new works, Rajan adds the novels of authors
including Amit Chaudhuri, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, Rohinton Mistry,
Vikram Chandra and Pankaj Mishra to the evolving canon of Indian literature in English.
Although Indian female writers also addressed political issues, Rajan observes that in general they were
‘[l]ess invested in the ‘nation’ as their fictional canvas, embracing instead the gendered spaces of home,
family, marriage, and domesticity’ (Rajan, 2019, p. 31). Rajan’s list of the most ignificant ‘second stage’
female writers includes Arundhati Roy, Neelum Saran Gour and Githa Hariharan.

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A postcolonial canon of Anglophone Indian literature
• The third stage, from around the start of the new millennium, has been
dominated politically by the rise to power of the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), which has combined neo-liberal economic policies with a resurgent
Hindu nationalism. India’s literary culture in this period has been
characterized by two broad developments, namely a turn in literary fiction
towards representing India’s poorest classes, and a flood of popular fiction
(with romances and thrillers prominent) aimed at the expanding middle-class
readership. Of those literary works most likely to be added to the canon of
Indian literature in English, Rajan singles out the new writers she
characterizes collectively as ‘politically engaged and historically self-
conscious [...] funny-comic, or darkly comic and satirical. Above all, they
introduce to the world of anglophone fiction figures from the lower-middle
class and especially the rural and urban underclass’ (Rajan, 2019, p. 39). They
include writers living both in India and in the diaspora: Neel Mukherjee,
Aravind Adiga, Manil Suri, Kunal Basu, and several more. Of the most
significant woman writers of this latest generation, Rajan discusses authors
including Susan Visvanathan, Sharmistha Mohanty and Nilanjana Roy.
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3 Literary canons in Anglophone Africa
Although there are similarities between the colonial and postcolonial
histories of India and Africa, the differences are even more striking. Most
obviously, India was Britain’s only colony in South Asia, whereas Britain
had many colonies in Africa. Independence for India dawned in 1947; in
Africa, independence was achieved over several decades from the 1950s
to 1990s. In each of the new nations, independence produced distinctive
postcolonial societies, political systems and cultures, including
distinctive literary cultures.

To convey how English literature was transformed in African postcolonial contexts,
we turn now to three case studies:

decolonization and the creation of an African literary canon

 postcolonial Kenya and the Kenyan literary canon
 a literary canon for South Africa’s rainbow nation.
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Decolonization and the creation of an African literary canon

In the first half of the twentieth century, the British Empire spread across vast
swathes of Africa (see Figure 4). Resistance to colonial rule in Africa
gathered momentum in the 1950s, culminating in independence for a
succession of new African nations: Sudan in 1956; Ghana in 1957; Somalia
and Nigeria in 1960; Sierra Leone and Tanzania in 1961; Uganda in 1962;
Kenya in 1963; Malawi and Zambia in 1964; the Gambia in 1965; Botswana
and Lesotho in 1966; Mauritius and Swaziland in 1968; the Seychelles in
1976; Zimbabwe in 1980; and South Africa in 1994.
The end of the British Empire in Africa (or decolonization) coincided with the
Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. The cultural
theorist Graham MacPhee emphasizes the significance of this conjunction:
Without detracting from the real achievement of national liberation movements in gaining
independence – often in the face of considerable violence by the colonial state –
decolonization also needs to be understood as part of a larger reformulation of Western global
hegemony. This reformulation saw a shift from the often direct control exercised by European
empires to a system of formally sovereign states supervised by a series of international bodies
directed by the United States (Lazarus, 2004, p. 30–32). In this new hegemonic arrangement, power is
no longer exercised through formal imperialism, but largely operates through economic
channels, support for political proxies and various forms of military intervention, whether clandestine,
‘anti- communist’, ‘humanitarian’ or as part of the wars ‘on drugs’ or ‘on terror’.
(MacPhee, 2011, pp. 22–23)
Decolonization and the creation of an African literary canon
Decolonization and the creation of an African literary canon
 In other words, the independence from Britain won by the former African colonies was qualified in at least two important respects: first, as Britain lost
political power, so the USA filled the power vacuum, expanding its influence in Africa; and second, Britain’s overt political control of its colonies was
superseded by the USA’s informal and more covert mechanisms for promoting its geo-political interests – through ‘economic channels’, support for
political proxies, military interventions, and clandestine ‘anti-communist’ or ‘humanitarian’ campaigns. These informal mechanisms have been termed
‘soft power’, an effective alternative to the exercise of formal mechanisms of military and political power.
(Reading 18 p. 99) – Extra Analysis of factors affecting the development of literature in Post-colonial Africa (besides the nationalist/ resistance movements).
How do these broader economic and political histories of African decolonization relate to literature, or specifically to literary canons? Recent
research has uncovered the extent to which the USA identified literature as a strategic target for advancing its interests in postcolonial Africa. That was done
mainly by
 getting books published or distributed abroad without revealing any U.S. influence
 Initiating and subsidizing indigenous national and international organizations for book publishing or distributing purposes
 stimulating the writing of politically significant books by unknown foreign authors – either by directly subsiding the author, or indirectly through agents
or publishers
 predominantly establishing a publishing program, funding a number of literary and political magazines including Black Orpheus, Transition, the New
African , Africa South and The Classic. Funding arts centers, literary festivals and prizes, theater productions, radio and television broadcasting
operations, and conferences.
 Enlisting writers and publishers in the production and dissemination of government propaganda creation in similar pattern to the historical precedent of
the British intelligence services of , for example, First World War experiences with authors like Thomas Hardy and H. G. Wells, or Second World War
with publishing houses like Oxford Unviersity Press, Penguin, Henemann, Faber, Collins who were likewise enlisted to promote the pro-war propaganda.
o In the case of postcolonial authors,). . .. the writers within the networks constituted a select group who received unprecedented opportunities for
international publication and promotion. Authors within these networks … i ncluded [Wole] Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Esk’ia Mphahlele, Lewis Nkosi,
John Pepper Clark- Bekederemo, Christopher Okigbo, Dennis Brutus, Alex La Guma, Grace Okot, Kofi Awooner, and Ama Ata Aidoo, and, to a
lesser extent, Ngũgĩ [wa Thiong’o] and [Bessie] Head., …went on to receive “the lion’s share of attention in African university literature courses’ …
particular names gained patronage from the CIA for gaining top positions in the ‘canon of anglophone African writing (Lindfors,
2000, p. 10))
o Social networks are described by Pierre Bourdieu as a means of transmission and exchange of social capital. He maintains that a ‘network of
relationships is the product of investment strategies, individual or collective, consciously or unconsciously aimed at establishing or reproducing
social relationships that are directly usable in the short or long term’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 249), and that these networks operate by principles of
exclusion: ‘the conservation and accumulation of the capital which is the basis of the group’ depends on members of the group regulating ‘the
conditions of access to the right to declare oneself a member of the group’ (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 251)
o Recent scholarship in African print culture has excavated hidden literature that had been excluded from the canon.

Reflections:
Thinking back to the examples of Shakespeare and Rushdie, we noted in both their cases that producing the great literary works of literature is but the first step
towards canonization; what must follow is a combination of commercial, cultural and political endorsements – a print culture producing glowing reviews, an education
system prescribing their works in curricula, and a publishing industry profiting from sales of their works, to name but the most obvious. The case of African literature at the
historical moment of decolonization introduces a new element: a large-scale and coordinated neo- colonial initiative dedicated to publishing and promoting particular
3 Literary canons in Anglophone Africa
Postcolonial Kenya (pp.108 --111) – Colonial History to Independence
• British colonial rule in Kenya dated back to the granting of a trading
charter to the British East African Trading Company in 1888.
• When the Company went bankrupt, the British government assumed
control, establishing the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya in 1920
• This tension escalated after the Second World War into an anti-colonial
war between the British authorities and the insurgents of the Kenya
Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), also known as Mau Mau, who
fought for ‘ithaka na wiyathi’ (land and freedom).
• By 1956, around 10,000 Mau Mau, 590 British soldiers, 1,819 Africans
fighting for the British, 32 European settlers, and 26 Asian civilians had
been killed (Curtis, 2003, p. 323).
• In spite of the suppression of the Mau Mau, anti-colonial resistance
continued and culminated in independence in 1963, with the Kenyan
African National Union Winning the first free elections, and then going
on to hold power for the next thirty-nine years.
N. Hannawi
3 Literary canons in Anglophone Africa
Postcolonial Kenya (pp.108 --111)
What did literature have to do with Kenya’s violent colonial and
anti- colonial history?
• For the Kenyan writer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (whose ideas you studied in Chapter 1), literature
was integral to the confrontation between the British colonizer and the Kenyan colonized.
• Ngũgĩ describes his own school and university education in 1940s and 1950s Kenya:
‘The syllabus of the English Department [...] meant a study of the history of English literature
from Shakespeare, Spencer and Milton to James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards and
the inevitable F. R. Leavis’ (wa Thiong’o, 1986, p. 90).
The consequences of such an education were that ‘African children who encountered
[English] literature in colonial schools and universities were thus experiencing the world
as defined and reflected in the European experience of history’ (wa Thiong’o, 1986, p. 93).
 For Ngũgĩ, such an education in the English literary canon functioned as the cultural
complement of Britain’s political and economic domination of Kenyan society, helping to
create an African elite loyal to their British masters.
An education in the English language and literature, with the English literary canon
featuring Shakespeare at its core, was directly implicated in effecting the cultural control
of Kenyans that would complete their economic and political subordination.

N. Hannawi
3 Literary canons in Anglophone Africa
Postcolonial Kenya (pp.108 --111)

In 1968, Ngũgĩ and two colleagues at Nairobi University, Owuor Anyumba and
Taban Lo Liyong, produced a manifesto which provided an answer. Read the extract
from the manifesto and summarize its arguments, outlining the Kenyan literary
resources recruited to oppose the domination of English literature.
We reject the primacy of English literature and cultures. The aim, in short, should be to
orientate ourselves towards placing Kenya, East Africa and then Africa in the center. All
other things are to be considered in their relevance to our situation and their contribution
towards our understanding ourselves ... In suggesting this we are not rejecting other streams,
especially the western stream. We are only clearly mapping out the directions and
perspectives the study of culture and literature will inevitably take in an African university. [...] We
want to establish the centrality of Africa in the department.
This [...] is justifiable on various grounds, the most important one being that education is
a means of knowledge about ourselves. Therefore, after we have examined ourselves,
we radiate outwards and discover peoples and worlds around us. With Africa at the
center of things, not existing as an appendix or satellite of other countries and literatures,
things must be seen from an African perspective. [...] The study of the Oral Tradition
would therefore supplement (not replace) courses in Modern African Literature. By discovering and
proclaiming loyalty to indigenous values, the new literature would on the one hand be set
in the stream of history to which it belongs and so be better appreciated; and on the
N. Hannawi
other be better able to embrace and assimilate other thoughts without losing its roots.
The English literary canon and post-
colonialism Postcolonial Kenya
ln 1968, Ngugi and two colleagues at Nairobi University, Owuor Anyumba and ,Taban Lo
Liyong, produced a manifesto which provided an answer to the role of literary resources to
accompany the anti-colonial struggles:
• “ We reject the primacy of English literature and cultures. The aim, in short, should be
to orientate ourselves towards placing Kenya, East Africa and then Africa in the centre. All
other things are to be considered in their relevance to our situation and their contribution
towards understanding ourselves…. in suggesting this we are not rejecting other
streams, especially the western stream. We are only clearly mapping out the directions
and perspectives the study of culture and literature will inevitably be taken in an African
university. We want to establish the centrality of Africa in the department. This is
justifiable on various grounds, the most important one being that education is a means
of knowledge about ourselves. Therefore, after we have examined ourselves, we radiate
outwards and discover peoples and worlds around us. With Africa at the centre of things,
not existing as an appendix or a satellite of other countries and literatures, things must be
seen from the African perspective.”
• “...... The study of the Oral Tradition would... supplement (not replace) courses in
Modern African Literature. By discovering and proclaiming loyalty to indigenous values,
the new literature would on the one hand be set in the stream of history to which it
belongs and so be better appreciated; and on the other be better able to embrace and
assimilate other thoughts without losing its roots.”
(quoted in Ngugi, 1986, pp. 94-5) N. Hannawi
The English literary canon and post-colonialism
Postcolonial Kenya
Comment
The manifesto argues that the colonial deference to English literature must be replaced with the
postcolonial assertion of the primacy of Kenyan literature.
A Kenyan literary canon must be at the core of the Kenyan literary education, with successive layers of
East African literature and African literature ‘radiating’ outwards. The ‘streams’ of Western literatures
would be included within a Kenyan university literary education, but only as one among many
literatures.
Of particular importance in forging a postcolonial Kenyan literary education is the inclusion of the African
oral tradition to supplement modern African literature.
By transforming the Kenyan literary education along these lines, Kenyans will acquire a better knowledge of
themselves, they will appreciate their own literature in its appropriate context, and they will remain
connected with their pre-colonial roots.
Present day commentary:
• However, looking back 40 years later at Ngũgĩ, Anyumba and Lo Liyong’s manifesto, the critic
Apollo Obonyo Amoko observes that while the so-called ‘Nairobi Revolution’ might have changed
literature syllabuses at certain African universities, its social impact has fallen well short of its
authors’ dreams .

The systemic inequalities of African education systems: ‘the unequal distribution of cultural as well as economic capital
[. . .] militates against the possibility of a radically democratic nationalist discourse or practice emerging out of the
school system as currently constituted’; and has ensured that ‘a university education would be available at exorbitant
cost to an infinitesimally small proportion of the population – the postcolonial professional-managerial class in training
– and would be unaffordable for the rest of the country’s citizens’ (Amoko, 2010, p. 14–15). In other words, despite its
Afrocentric and democratic ideals, the manifesto’s impact has been severely limited by the stark economic differences
within African societies. (pp.110,111).
colonialism
A literary canon for South Africa’s rainbow nation
South Africa’s colonial and postcolonial history is unique in several respects.
There are at least three complications to note at the outset in introducing the South African case
study.
First, dating South Africa’s transition to a “postcolonial” society is complicated by its relatively
large white settler population. ln one sense, South Africa ceased to be a colony of Britain either
in 1910 when it was declared the Union of South Africa, or in 1961 when it left the British
Commonwealth to become the Republic of South Africa. In another sense, neither of these
constitutional transitions amounted to independence’ for the black majority, as they were denied
basic political freedoms, and the white , settler regime’s policies of segregation and apartheid
produced what became known as ‘colonialism ofa special type’. ln this second sense, South Africa
therefore only became ‘postcolonial’ in 1994 with the first free elections after the end of
apartheid.
 A second complication is that English was not the only European language imposed in South
Africa: the majority of white South Africans speak Afrikaans (derived principally from Dutch, but
also influenced by French, German, indigenous and slave languages).
Third, like lndia and Kenya, South Africa has numerous language groups and literatures within its
borders, and arguments like Herder’s discussed earlier, about the axiomatic bond between
Nation-Language-Literature, must therefore be re-thought to accommodate such complexity.
• The search for a distinctive and independent South African literature (and literary canon) began
in the early twentieth century, as certain scholars turned their attention to literatures in African
languages, including oral literatures. A number of books and articles on African-language folklore
and proverbs appeared, accompanied by reviews in newspapers of new works by African
N. Hannawi
colonialism
A literary canon for South Africa’s rainbow nation
• The search for a distinctive and independent South African literature (and literary canon) began in
the early twentieth century. The efforts gained fresh impetus in the 1970s with the rise of the black
consciousness movement. The leading theorist of black consciousness, Steve Biko, emphasized the
need to reverse European cultural imperialism and to proclaim African culture. In a 1971 lecture,
he affirmed the need for a ‘culture of defiance, self- assertion and group pride and solidarity. This
is a culture which emanates from a situation of common experience of oppression.

• Biko’s ideas did indeed ‘spread to other aspects’, and especially to literature, as a number of writers
and critics rejected Eurocentric aesthetic values. For example, Mothobi Mutloatse extended his
political opposition to apartheid to his literary commitments: ‘[w]e are going to pee, spit and shit on
literary convention before we are through; we are going to kick and push and drag literature into the
form we prefer’ (Mutloatse, 1980, p. 5).
• With the escalation of the anti-apartheid struggle in the 1980s, deference to the English language and
to English literature in South Africa diminished further, as critics made compelling cases for
including the many South African literary traditions in a South African literary canon. These literatures
included: the oral literatures of pre- colonial societies (Khoisan, Nguni, and Sotho); English settler
literature (headed by the author Olive Schreiner); Afrikaans literature; literature by black South Africans
both in indigenous languages and in English or Afrikaans; literature by descendants of indentured
laborers from India; and literature in English andN.Afrikaans
Hannawi by writers classified as ‘Colored’ under
apartheid.
colonialism
A literary canon for South Africa’s rainbow nation
• With the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners in 1990,
and the first free elections in 1994, debates about constructing a new
literature to serve the new nation intensified. But when the extent of the
changes to the South African literary canon was measured in 1992 by Bernth
Lindfors, a professor who surveyed 139 course descriptions from the
literature 'syllabuses of 22 South African universities, he drew the following
rather negative conclusions:
1) African literature on most campuses is still a marginalized compared to the
traditional (Anglophone) English, (a step-daughter compared to …the queen
mother of all its undernourished Anglophone offspring. )
2) Moreover, in South Africa the battle for official recognition of indigenous literary
legitimacy has only been half won, for native sons and daughters have crowded
out most of the interesting foreigners from parts further north, the result being a
kind of geographical apartheid in which Africa above the Limpopo is
underrepresented in the pantheon of African letters.
(Lindfors, 1996a, p. 6)

N. Hannawi
The English literary canon and post-
colonialism
A literary canon for South Africa’s rainbow nation
Lindfors was convinced that African literature (literature from north of South Africa’s border -
the Limpopo River) is shamefully under-represented in the teaching of literature in South
Africa.
Several South African critics disputed Lindfors’s conclusions, arguing that they/ (his conclusions)
not only fail to record accurately the number of South African and African texts being taught,
but also do not interrogate the very notion of the literary canon.
For Judith Coullie and Trish Gibbon, for example, ‘the point is not “to create a separate canon” of
women’s or African writing, but “to abolish all canons” (Coullie and Gibbon, 1996, p. 17).
Lindfors’s exclusive attention to the canon, they argue, ‘is promoting a deeply
conservative view of literary studies that privileges the content of the curricula over
approaches and methodologies, and so elides any examination of approach and its
informing ideology’ (Coullie and Gibbon, 1996, p. 17). In other words, simply swapping
Shakespeare for Soyinka or Gordimer is not nearly enough; the centralizing authority of
the literary canon itself - whether English, African or South African – must be subject to
critique, its complicity with exclusionary nationalist ideologies must be challenged.
But Lindfors in his commitment to the constitution of a literary canon for ‘the rainbow
nation’ of South Africa . .. argued:
South African university English departments can assist in this crucial process of self-
definition by putting South African literature first and setting other African literatures
on an equal footing with Western literatures. A rainbow nation deserves a rainbow N. Hannawi
The English literary canon and post-
colonialism Postcolonial/ post-apartheid South
Africa
• Discussions
 The most obvious appeal of Lindfors’s argument is that it repeats for post-apartheid South
Africa Ngũgĩ’s argument for postcolonial Kenya. As Ngũgĩ sought to forge a Kenyan
literary canon to serve the postcolonial Kenyan nation, so Lindfors seeks to promote a
‘rainbow’ literature to serve post-apartheid South Africa. The shackles of the British colonial
domination of South Africa’s literary landscape should be broken, and a literary canon rooted
in South Africa writing constructed
 A second appealing aspect of Lindfors’s dream of a rainbow literature is that the history
of literature in South Africa has been a history of racial and linguistic
compartmentalisation and conflict. From the angry protests of the black consciousness
generation of the 1970s, the pattern has been of literary historians making claims for the
literatures of distinct racial and linguistic groups rather than making claims to represent a
‘national literature’.
 What the post-apartheid political dispensation/ privilege offers is the opportunity to imagine
a national literary canon that represents the literatures of all the nation’s racial and
linguistic communities.
Potential Problems:
Lindfors hints at one when he identifies the ‘geographical apartheid in which Africa above
the Limpopo is underrepresented’.
A second related problem is the one identified by Coullie and Gibbon: national literary canons
N. Hannawi
might in fact not be especially desirable, as they function as much to exclude interesting
The English literary canon and post-
colonialism Postcolonial/ post-apartheid South
Africa
What are the potential problems with this hope to create a national South African
canon?
-- You will recall that one of the characteristics of the emerging eighteenth-century
national literatures was that they swiftly became sealed off from each other
behind national boundaries.
-- Are national literary canons by definition a good thing? Furthermore, does the
fact that a literary canon is the product of an anti-colonial/anti-apartheid struggle
automatically immunize it from installing new hierarchies, new forms of exclusion?
If your answers to these questions are ‘no’, or even a more cautious ‘maybe not’, we
might begin to consider arguments in favour of ditching national literary canons
entirely, and start looking for alternative ways of organizing our approach to the
reading and studying of literature

N. Hannawi
4 Alternatives to national literary canons?
The future of the literary canons?
• in the United States, the most powerful alternative proposed to the national literary
canon has been the concept of a canon of ‘World literature, and Reading B explores this
possibility.
• David Damrosch is an American literary critic, and he summarises recent arguments in
the United States about literary canons. He is principally concerned with selecting
literary texts for teaching in US universities so that students read beyond the traditional
Western literary canon. (see Reading B World literature in a postcanonical,
hypercanonical age )
• The positive conclusion one might draw from these developments is that the
Eurocentric canon of world literature has been dismantled. But Damrosch looks more
closely at the teaching of literature in the United States, and draws a more complicated
conclusion. He compares the fate of the Western canon in the last ten to twenty years
(the ‘postcanonical age’) to the fate of luxury motor cars (the ‘postindustrial age’). With
more sophisticated communication technology, instead of being superseded, the Lexus
and Mercedes Benz have thrived and strengthened their hold on the market. In the
same way, with more sophisticated critical theory, Shakespeare and Joyce have thrived
and strengthened their standing in the canon of world, not just national, literature
Damrosch argues that whereas there used to be a two-tier model of organising
literature into ‘major’ and ‘minor’ authors, there are “now: three tiers: a hypercanon
(made up of the major writers); a countercanon (made up of writers from non-Western
N. Hannawi
nations outside the literatures of the ‘great-power languages’); and a shadow canon
4 Alternatives to national literary canons?
The future of the literary canons?

The positive conclusion one might draw from these

developments is that the Eurocentric canon of world
literature has been dismantled.

N. Hannawi
4 Alternatives to national literary
canons?
The future of the literary canons?

But Damrosch looks more closely at the

teaching of literature in the United States and
draws a more complicated conclusion.

He compares the fate of the Western canon in the

last ten to twenty years (the ‘postcanonical age’) to
the fate of luxury motor cars (the ‘postindustrial
age’).
N. Hannawi
 4 Alternatives to national literary
canons?
The future of the literary canons?
With more sophisticated communication technology,
instead of being superseded, the Lexus and Mercedes
Benz have thrived and strengthened their hold on the
market.

In the same way, with more sophisticated critical theory,

Shakespeare and Joyce have thrived and strengthened their
standing in the canon of world, not just national, literature.

N. Hannawi
 The future of the literary canons?
Damrosch (an American literary critic) argues that whereas
there used to be a two-tier model of organizing literature
into major and minor authors, there are now three tiers:

countercanon
made up of shadow canon
hypercanon writers from made up of the
made up of the non-Western former minor
major writers nations outside authors, who
the literatures of have faded from
the great-power prominence)
languages
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