Postcolonial Theory: The Emergence of a Critical Discourse

Postcolonial literature – in the past variously referred to as Commonwealth literature, the New or World literatures in English – has not only found its way into university classrooms all over the world but has also triggered an immense number of critical studies, so much so that it is high time for a useful research aid to assist students and teachers in finding their way through ‘the bush’ of postcolonial studies. This selected and annotated bibliography on theoretical aspects of postcolonial literature/studies will be their invaluable trailguide for many years to come. More than 360 entries are annotated concisely, arranged chronologically and referred to by their regional origin. They illustrate the variety of arguments as well as the long historical and the wide global dimension of the theoretical discourse that began to emerge in the British colonies of the 19th century and by the end of the 1980s had developed into a veritable challenge to English Studies. Two articles complement these bibliographical entries dealing respectively with the earlier transformation of Commonwealth into postcolonial literature studies and the more recent development of postcolonial theory to the present day. Checklists of essay collections and of leaned journals give information about the sources from where texts were drawn. An index facilitates the search for the names of authors and of writers, critics and others referred to in their texts as well as for important critical terms.