About the Book
This collection ranges far and wide, as befits the personality and accomplishments of the dedicatee, Geoffrey V. Davis, German studies and exile literature scholar, postcolonialist (if there are ‘specialties’, then Australia, Canada, India, South Africa, Black Britain), journal and book series editor.... The volume opens with essays on cultural theory and practice, proceeds to close analyses of ‘settler colony’ texts from Canada, India, Australia, and New Zealand (drama, fiction, and poetry) as well as Pacific drama and Canadian indigeneity, thence ‘homeward’ to the UK (black drama, Scottish fiction, the music of Morrissey) and to German themes (exile literature; fictions about Hitler). Because Geoff’s commitment to literature has always been ‘hands-on’, the book closes with a selection of poems and experimental prose. Writers discussed include Carmen Aguirre, Hany Abu-Assad, Beryl Bainbridge, Albert Belz, Peter Bland, Peter Carey, Lynda Chanwai–Earle, Kamala Das, Robert Drewe, Éric Emmanuel–Schmitt, Toa Fraser, Stephen Fry, Dianna Fuemana, Mavis Gallant, Alasdair Gray, Xavier Her¬bert, Janette Turner Hospital, Elizabeth Jolley, Wendy Lill, Varanasi Nagalakshmi, Arundhati Roy, Daniel Sloate, Drew Hayden Taylor, Jane Urquhart, Roy Williams, and Arnold Zweig.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Memory Trip. Partly in Tandem, Partly Quadrilogical
Conspectus and Comparison
Erhard Reckwitz: Literature as a Rule-Breaking Activity
Sven Strasen and Peter Wenzel: Construction of Identities, Polar Opposites, and Cultural Models: The Binary Approach to Cultural Interaction
Gerhard Stilz: What Happens in the ‘Contact Zone’?
Ganesh Devy: Endangered Languages and Dispossessed Communities
Norbert H. Platz: Ecocriticism, Environmental Ethics, and a New Ecological Culture
Unsettled Settlers and Others
Kristjana Gunnars: Extreme Liminality: The Linked Stories of Édouard, Juliette, and Lena in Mavis Gallant’s Overhead in a Balloon
Peter O. Stummer: Move the Earth with One’s Dramatic Shovel? Some Observations on Recent Plays in Canada and Beyond
Terry Goldie: Fanciful Indigeneity
Martin Kuester: Between European Past and Canadian Present: Lesbian Mennonite Writing and Collective Memory
David Callahan: Entropy and the Totally Buried Home in Jane Urquhart’s A Map of Glass
Devindra Kohli: “Under a pillar of rain/thinking goodbye”: Remembering Kamala Das
Béatrice Bijon: ‘Bubbles into the Bottle’ of Postcolonialism: Ritornellos and Screen-Memories in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
Russell McDougall: The Materialization and Transformation of Xavier Herbert: A Body of Work Committed to Australia
Dolores Herrero: The Phantom and Transgenerational Trauma in Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well
Helga Ramsey–Kurz: Due Preparations for Paradise: or, The Plague Now According to Hany Abu-Assad and Janette Turner Hospital
Marc Delrez: “Grace of the Crocodiles”: Towards Deterritorialization of Culture in Robert Drewe’s Grace
Jaroslav Kušnír: Lives of Artists, Identities of Countries: Dependence, Displacement, Identity, and Australia in Peter Carey’s Theft
Marc Maufort: Positioning Alterity: Multi-Ethnic Identities in Contemporary New Zealand Drama
Peter H. Marsden: Ut pictura poiesis: Paintings and Painters in the Poetry of Peter Bland
Home Territory
Bénédicte Ledent: A Play of Significance: Roy Williams’s Days of Significance and the Question of Labels
Carla Sassi: Postcolonializing Glasgow’s Amnesia: Alasdair Gray’s Lanark as a Palimpsest of Scottish Imperial History
Gavin Hopps: A Foreigner at Home: Morrissey and the Art of Embarrassment
First Love
David Midgley: Zweig’s Englishmen
Deborah Vietor–Engländer: “Mr Davis’s Monument, or Dear Mr Davis, what shall I do?”
Ian Wallace: The Enigma of Hitler: Counterfactual Perspectives
What It’s All About
Dennis Haskell: A Tale of Two Cities
Geoff Goodfellow: Onto the Spin Cycle
Michael Sharkey: The Day Collector: An Ode. My Classic Bent: Scene From a Life
Gordon Collier: Canada Quartet (for Geoff). Historia canis. In motionless air
Anne Brewster: Travelogue
Andrew Taylor: Karri forest. Maxi, goodbye
Pia Thielmann: The Way to Agra; or Nature’s Pain Everywhere
Kirpal Singh: from this side of memory
Notes on Contributors
About the Author :
Gordon Collier has published books on translation and on Patrick White, and is the editor or co-editor of numerous critical anthologies. He is co-general editor of the book-series Cross/Cultures and of the journal Matatu.
Marc Delrez teaches anglophone and comparative literature at the University of Liège. He is the author of a book on Janet Frame and co-editor (with Bénédicte Ledent) of The Contact and the Culmination (1997), a collection of essays on postcolonial literature.
Anne Fuchs taught comparative literature and theatre studies at the University of Nice. She is the co-editor (with Geoff Davis) of two collections of essays on South African and Black British theatre.
Bénédicte Ledent teaches English language and Caribbean literature at the University of Liège. She is the author, editor, and co-editor of books on Caryl Phillips and on Caribbean literature.
Contributors: Béatrice Bijon, Anne Brewster, David Callahan, Gordon Collier, Marc Delrez, Ganesh Devy, Terry Goldie, Geoff Goodfellow, Kristjana Gunnars, Dennis Haskell, Dolores Herrero, Gavin Hopps, Devindra Kohli, Martin Kuester, Jaroslav Kušnír, Bénédicte Ledent, Russell McDougall, Peter H. Marsden, Marc Maufort, David Midgley, Norbert H. Platz, Helga Ramsey–Kurz, Erhard Reckwitz, Carla Sassi, Michael Sharkey, Kirpal Singh, Gerhard Stilz, Sven Strasen, Peter O. Stummer, Andrew Taylor, Pia Thielmann, Deborah Vietor–Engländer, Ian Wallace, and Peter Wenzel
