From the 16th century to the early 20th century, the regions of the empire captivated people's imagination. In British literature, they were first places of curiosity where the inhabitants could be "of monstrous shape", where fortunes could be made and unmade, where natives were heathens who needed to be educated and converted. This "otherness" of the colonies seemed to justify the colonizing enterprise. At the beginning of the 20th century, a more subtle image of the colonies began to appear together with a denunciation of the worst aspects of colonialism.

-> Orientalism, Edward Said : the Victorian's construction of "otherness" represented a Manichean opposition between colonizer/colonized or civilized/savage which justified colonial control and expansion as well as the silencing and marginalizing of indigenous people.

Postcolonial writings : Postcolonial literature has to be set within historical and cultural perspectives. Internal political and religious problems are essential to understand such diverse works (Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children)

Most of them choose to reassert the cultural and linguistic traditions of their native countries, leading to new hybrid forms. The use of oral traditions, myth, magic realism, mime and dance help to assert their cultural identity.

Pb : write in English, the language of the former colonizer. Most of the time, they adapt it and reinvent it in order to appropriate it.

Postcolonial literature tends to "write back" and reword the usual representations of their culture, a way of reversing the fact that the colonial education system was based on English literature only.

-> sometimes : rewriting the books, changing their message (Robinson Crusoe)

Since most of the colonies had strong patriarchal systems, women tended to be doubly penalized.

Recurrent themes in Canadian literature : importance of landscape and space, the beauty and grandeur of its huge, open spaces, but also the harshness of its climate and sometimes hostile environment, ethnic differences

-> Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale : handmaids have to have sex and produce a child)

1980-2000 : a multiplicity of voices : as new immigrants increasingly arrive from non-European countries, Canada has become multi-cultural.

-> Carol Shields, Michael Ondaatje

Australia : for 90 years, Australia was peopled by guards and convicts, and it has constituted a traumatic beginning for the nation.

Australian national identity is linked to the bush, a term which refers to the wilderness, to uncultivated land where it's difficult to settle but which in people's imagination was associated with romance and adventure. Another theme is that of traveling, of leaving and returning, a metaphor for the often ambiguous relationship to Britain. The multiculturalism has led to reflections on identity and alienation.

• 1901 : different colonies were federated into one nation : sense of nationhood
• After WWII, the British influence waned, replaced by that of the USA, particularly in terms of popular culture

-> A.D Hope, Les Murray, Ray Lawler, Patrick White, Peter Carey, Rubert Drewe

New Zealand : the relation between New Zealand and Britain has always been fairly serene. All through the 19th century, literature imitated that of Britain, with mainly melodramatic romances, and only in the 20th century that literature came into its own.

-> Ketherine Mansfield, Frank Sargeson, Janet Frame

Africa : The "Scramble for Africa" in the late 19th century was a race between Europe countries to grab as much of Africa as possible, in spite of fierce resistence from the differents ethic groups, with the resulting division of the continent at the 1885 Berlin Conference. It was for economic reasons : discovery of gold and diamonds

South Africa : the literature has tended to be realistic. It focuses on the devastating csq of historical forces upon individual lives.

• Years of Apartheid (1945-1990) coloured and black population was considered to inferior to whites and exploited. This political climate is at the heart of South African writing, even today.

-> Peter Abrahams, Nadine Gordier, Andre Brink, J.M Coetzee

Nigeria and Kenya : they gained their independance in the 60s, raise of the indigenous literature in the mid 20th C.

Nigeria : reasons of rise

• creation of the university of Ibadan
• founding of the literary journal Black Orpheus
• founding of the Mbari club (theatre, art gallery,...)

A country with linguistic diverstity explains the different reactions toward colonialism.

earliest artists :

• Amos Tutuola : writes in dialect, uses Yoruba mythology
• Cyprian Ekwensi : writes tales and deals with corruption of urban life
• Poetry of Okigbo and Okara deals with the clash of culture

C. Achebe : 1st nigerian novelist internationnaly known, writes noveks in English, criticising military coups which threatened democracy, explains the importance of mastering English to push the boundaries of the language in ordre to translate African ways of living. His novels are about Igbo communities and how they were altered by colonialism and Christianity. (Things fall appart : Igbo chief confronts a colonial gvt)

Soyinka : a playwright who fights against humain rights violations : Yoruba religion, mime, dance, masks,... His play became darker as the country's political context go thougher (Biafran War).

The Lion and the Jewel : satire about the opposition between modernists and traditionalists.

New voices emerged after the end of the Civil War (1970) : Emecheta (condition of women, child slavery,...), Okri (African folklore, realism and modernism : Flowers and Shadows)

Kenya :

White settlers took vast quantities of land. Africans were moved to less fertile lands and often provided cheap labour for the colonizers. The divisions in the Kikuyu society are still existant today.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o : writed in Engish, then in Gikuyu

India : When Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the English translation of Gitanjali many reacted with surprise at the choice of translation english-language of cultural imperialism and of the elite classes of india

1600: creation of East India Company

1858: a year after indian Muting, Britain placed the colony under the authority of the Crown. Queen Victoria became "Empress of India".

20th Century: rise of indian intellectuals, anti-British feeling : after peaceful demonstrations (Ghandi) were brutally repressed, resistance to the British spread.

As Indian independance became inevitabke, religious extremism and violence grew as Muslims feared that their interests might be threatened since the Congress Party was chiefly Hindu. They called for the creation of a separate state, Pakistanı, using violent attacks. When India's independance was declared in 1947, Pakistan became an independant state.

Salman Rushdie: tried to portray the politics and culture of his country. He is often described as a magic realist but he refused this label because it can lulls the reader into a sense that is to remoted from the political reality, (Midnight's Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses....). He explores the themes of fundamentalism, faith and doubt, superstition and bigotry.

The Caribbean : it's difficult to speak of a Caribbean identity since the various islands had different cultures and responses to colonialism. Each island has its own geography, ethnic mix and culture. But independance has often brought continued poverty and economic dependance on Britain and the US.

Caribbeanness :

• importancs of African culture
• black population as double victims slavery and colonialism
• various Creole languages
• hybridity
• great linguistic creativity
• a sense of diaspora

Dean Rhys : Wide Sargasso Sea, rewrites the English canon to give a voice to a character we never hear in Jane Eyr (Bertha, Rochester's wife)