Anglophone Literatures
Anglophone literatures comprise the body of literary writing produced in English across Britain, Ireland, North America, and the many postcolonial and diasporic societies where English became a literary language.
Definition
The study of literary works composed in the English language, encompassing national traditions, postcolonial writing, and global diasporic literatures.
Scope
This area surveys literatures written in English from the medieval period to the present and across the globe. It includes the British and Irish canon, American literature, the postcolonial literatures of former British colonies in Africa, the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Pacific, and the diasporic and transnational writing of authors moving between Anglophone cultures. It treats both the historical development of these traditions and the critical frameworks—canon formation, postcolonial theory, transnationalism—through which they are studied.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- How did English become a global literary language and with what consequences?
- What distinguishes national Anglophone canons from one another and what unites them?
- How have colonized and formerly colonized writers transformed the English literary tradition?
- How do diaspora and migration reshape Anglophone literary identity?
Key concepts
- canon formation
- postcolonial appropriation
- diaspora and migration
- national literary tradition
- transnationalism
Key theories
- Postcolonial 'writing back'
- Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin argued that postcolonial writers appropriate and transform the language and forms of the imperial center, 'writing back' to the canon to assert distinct cultural identities.
- Culture and imperialism
- Edward Said read the Anglophone canon in relation to empire, showing how literary form and imperial power were intertwined and how resistance emerged within and against that tradition.
History
English literature begins with Old and Middle English writing and matures through the Renaissance, Restoration, Romantic, and Victorian periods. American literature emerges as a distinct tradition in the nineteenth century. With the expansion and later dissolution of the British Empire, English became a literary medium across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, and postcolonial and diasporic writers reshaped the language and its canon in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Debates
- What belongs in the English canon?
- Critics dispute whether the canon should center the British and American traditions or be reconceived as a plural, global field of Anglophone writing.
- Language, power, and the colonized writer
- Scholars debate whether writing in English perpetuates colonial domination or can be reclaimed as a vehicle of resistance and cultural self-assertion.
Key figures
- Edward Said
- Bill Ashcroft
- Chinua Achebe
- Salman Rushdie
- Toni Morrison
Related topics
Seminal works
- ashcroft1989
- said1993
- greenblatt2018
Frequently asked questions
- Is Anglophone literature the same as British literature?
- No. British literature is one national tradition within the much larger field of Anglophone literatures, which includes American, Irish, Caribbean, African, South Asian, and many other literatures written in English.
- Why study literatures in English globally rather than nationally?
- A global frame captures how English circulated through empire and migration, producing connected yet distinct literary traditions that national categories alone cannot describe.