Commonwealth Literature

Commonwealth Literature

Name: Baraiya Bhavna P.

Roll No: 3

Sem: 3

Year: 2013-14

Submitted To: 

                           Department Of English

                          Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji                      Bhavnagar University.

                

First of all what is the commonwealth…?

vCommonwealth

                                        

                       Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the comman good. Historically, it has sometimes been synonymous with “republic” The English noun Commonwealth in the sense meaning “public welfare; general good or advantage” dates from the 15^th century. The original phrase “the commonwealth” or “the common weal” comes from the old meaning of “wealth” which is “well-being”. The term literary meant “common well being”.

                      In the 17^th century the definitionof “commonwealth” expanded from its original sense of “public welfare” or “commonweal”, to mean…

                           “A state in which the suprem power is vested in the people; a republic or democratic state”.

                           In the area of colonialism, it indicates the former British Commonwealth of Nations i.e. the former British empire consisting of the United Kingdom, its dependencies and certain former colonies that are now sovereign nations.

                         The Commonwealth of Nations, also known as the Commonwealth or the British Commonwealth, has manifested a distinctive literary development, marked by its cultural and historical diversity. The Commonwealth is an intergovernmental organization of 54 nations which were formerly part of the British Empire. The Commonwealth aims to provide a framework of common values, facilitating cooperation between its member states in the field of democracy, human rights, rule of law, free trade and peace.                        

                         In general, Commonwealth literature is a vague term which defines English-language works written in the former British colonies or place which had the status of dominions. Also known as New English Literature, it is a body of fictional works grouped together because of the underlying cultural history and certain recurrent patterns. As Commonwealth writers come from a wide variety of regions, they win fame in the Anglo-American world because of their exotic setting and characters.

                          Some scholars, for example Tiffin in her Commonwealth Literature: “Comparison and Judgment”

  

                                                        …argue that the very notion of Commonwealth Literature is in it self narrow and misleading. Others criticize the term as anachronism. Debates are centered also on the distinctions, similarities or overlapping of the term Commonwealth Literature and Postcolonial Literature. Hence, in an essay entitled Commonwealth Literature does not Exist, Salman Rushdie defined this type of fiction as…

                            

                          "A body of writing created in the English language, by persons who are not themselves white Britons, or Irish, or citizens of the United States of America."

                           However, he complained that the term is patronizing and marginalizes a number of writers, adding that this body of fiction will never be included in English literature, which will be always its superior.

                           The exact characteristics of Commonwealth literature also remain debatable. Recurrent motifs there are misuse of power, exploitation and alienation as well as post-colonial society. Apart from the issue of shared characteristics, scholars debate as to which writers to be included in the Commonwealth canon. Famous names among Commonwealth writers include:

Ø Salman Rushdie,

Ø R. K. Narayan,

Ø Nayantara Sahgal and

Ø Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Ø Japanese Nobel Kazuo Ishiguro.

·       Salman Rushdie

                           Salman Rushdie is one of the key representatives of contemporary Commonwealth literature. As an Indian-British novelist, he is world famous for his novel Midnight Children (1981), which won the Booker prize. Most of his books are set in India and have a particular emphasis on history. He is classified as a magical realist writer. Rushdie triggered protests in the Muslim world with the release of his novel The Satanic Verses (1989). Even the Iranian government pronounced a fatwa, or a death sentence, against Rushdie.

vImaginary Homelands

                                                 Imaginary Homeland is a collection of essays, reviews, and interviews which were made from 1981 to 1991. Rushdie's writing deals with the political, cultural, and imaginative exchanges which took place in the East and the West. Rushdie shows how although past geo-political colonialism largely continues as a cultural process in the present things are nevertheless unavoidably changing. Things always have changed, but the difference is that now subaltern groups are writing their/our own stories.

                                              In Imaginary Homelands Rushdie admits to the fictional polishing up of history/memory so as to be able to represent it as either history or fiction. (The result is meta- fiction) It is this inquiry into reality and memory, and how one is effected by historic and cultural movement, translation, migration, that underscores much of Rushdie's writing. He establishes his political context in the first two chapters, and then, the paper "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist" acts as a kind of preface to the literature he reviews.

vCommonwealth Literature' Does Not Exist

                                       In his essay "'Commonwealth Literature' Does Not Exist" , Rushdie describes the category 'Commonwealth Literature' as a ghetto, created by those who practice English literature 'proper'. "Every ghetto has its own rules" and "one of the rule one of the ideas on which the edifice rests, is that literature is an expression of nationality", and that culture springs from tradition. He says that "what we are facing here is the bogy of Authenticity ... (which) is the respectable child of old-fashioned exoticism. It demands that sources, forms, style, language and symbol all derive from a supposedly homogeneous and unbroken tradition". An exoticized culture must always show its credentials in order to prove itself worthy of 'special' attention.While Western cultures are seen as dynamic, progressive, and developed it is demanded of exoticized cultures to be original, pure, simple and preferably religious. At its worst, the term postcolonial implies a kind of pre-colonial (primitive) purity which has become corrupted because it could not resist the colonizers (modern) domination. It does not take into account that the process of colonization changes both the colonizer and the colonized and that cultural exchange is heterogeneous and not singular. Racial, cultural, linguistic singularity, or purity, is not only unlikely but also a pathological pursuit.