Benang : From the Heart
Fremantle
:
Fremantle Press
,
1999
Z135862
1999
single work
novel
(taught in 31 units)
'Oceanic in its rhythms and understanding, brilliant in its use of language and image, moving in its largeness of spirit, compelling in its narrative scope and style, Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.' (Publisher's website)
On successfully completing the course, students will be able to demonstrate an awareness of the range and purpose of post colonial literature and to engage in informed discussion of:
- cultural, social and historical contexts in colonised and post-colonised countries
- the concept of literary representation and modes of representation such as magic realism, social realism and mimeticism
- some methodologies appropriate to analyse the relation of colonised people in a postcolonial state.
By focusing on literature from post-colonial and colonial continents, this course explores the process of the transmission and adaptation of literary conventions of representation. It examines issues such as
1. the transmission and adaptation of conventions of written expression
2. the development of diasporic literary genres
3. the concept of representation
4. the political and cultural power of literature written in English
