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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Postcolonial Urban Vernacular Narratives In Contemporary Britain, Kathryn N. Moss
Postcolonial Urban Vernacular Narratives In Contemporary Britain, Kathryn N. Moss
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation explores the ways in which three postcolonial writers in Britain (Samuel Selvon, James Kelman, and Suhayl Saadi) have used the vernacular as a medium for third person narrative fiction. In doing so, they have emphasized the legitimacy, beauty, and utility of languages sometimes considered debased and ugly even by their own speakers. I argue that this shift from the margins to the center of dialect or minority language in fiction is a radical—and relatively recent—one, beginning in the mid-twentieth century. By utilizing the vernacular as a medium for third person narratives, these authors are bringing non-prestige vernacular voices …
Rogues In The Postcolony: The New Picaresque And The Making Of Modern India, Stacey Balkan
Rogues In The Postcolony: The New Picaresque And The Making Of Modern India, Stacey Balkan
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Rogues in the Postcolony looks at Indian picaresque novels that respond to and productively complicate dominant historical narratives by adapting formal conventions of the picaresque novel and by foregrounding the experiences of historically obscured figures, or “rogues.” The project is structured in such a way as to read colonial and postcolonial India through the lens of marginalized persons such as poppy farmers and, more recently, the citizens of Bhopal who continue to struggle with the toxic legacy of the Union Carbide fertilizer factory in their city. I argue that the unreliable narration and non-teleological structure of the picaresque form parody …