The rise of Pacific literature : decolonization, radical campuses, and modernism /
"The literary creativity that flowed through Oceania between 1960 and 1980, an era referred to as the "Golden Age" of Pacific writing, is inextricable from the optimism of a decolonizing age. It is also inseparable from the establishment of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) an...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Columbia University Press,
[2024]
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| Series: | Modernist latitudes.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "The literary creativity that flowed through Oceania between 1960 and 1980, an era referred to as the "Golden Age" of Pacific writing, is inextricable from the optimism of a decolonizing age. It is also inseparable from the establishment of the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) and the University of the South Pacific (USP). Founded expressly to facilitate Pacific independence, these universities allowed local and overseas educators to design progressive literary studies programs that rejected the old Beowulf-to-Brontë model, working instead towards a critical pedagogy of decolonization to instil a Pacific-centred curriculum that approached European modernist texts from Indigenous Pacific and anticolonial perspectives. Modernist Courses in Oceania tells the story of the effects of these reorientations on the literary texts produced during this transformative age of Pacific literature, which saw the publication of internationally recognized Pacific writers such as Albert Wendt, Subramani, Konai Helu Thaman and Marjorie Crocombe. Maebh Long and Matthew Hayward trace the ways in which modernist literature, themes, techniques, and affects, as they were taught at USP and UPNG, were drawn upon by writers from the decolonizing nations in Oceania. In addition, the authors examine the influence of postcolonial African and Caribbean writers as well as the impact of indigenous Pacific oral forms on Oceanic literature. By the end of this era, there was a body of contemporary Pacific writing that could be channelled back into the literary studies curricula, enabling a new generation of Oceanian writers to take a globally mediated Pacific literature as the wellspring of their own inspiration"-- |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 293 pages ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780231217446 0231217447 9780231217453 0231217455 |