03901nam 2200721 a 450 991046283050332120200520144314.00-231-52767-510.7312/maju15694(CKB)2670000000326436(EBL)949014(SSID)ssj0000820801(PQKBManifestationID)12400639(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000820801(PQKBWorkID)10864119(PQKB)11412858(StDuBDS)EDZ0000099581(MiAaPQ)EBC949014(DE-B1597)459087(OCoLC)825181137(OCoLC)826853586(OCoLC)979628727(DE-B1597)9780231527675(Au-PeEL)EBL949014(CaPaEBR)ebr10663165(CaONFJC)MIL614712(OCoLC)826853586(OCoLC)825181137(EXLCZ)99267000000032643620120418d2013 uy 0engur|n|---|||||txtccrProse of the world[electronic resource] modernism and the banality of empire /Saikat MajumdarNew York Columbia University Press20131 online resource (249 p.)Description based upon print version of record.0-231-15695-2 0-231-15694-4 Includes bibliographical references and index.Introduction: poetics of the prosaic -- James Joyce and the banality of refusal -- Katherine Mansfield and the fragility of Pakeha boredom -- The dailiness of trauma and liberation in Zoe Wicomb -- Amit Chaudhuri and the materiality of the mundane -- Epilogue: The uneventful.Everyday life in the far outposts of empire can be static, empty of the excitement of progress. A pervading sense of banality and boredom are, therefore, common elements of the daily experience for people living on the colonial periphery. Saikat Majumdar suggests that this impoverished affective experience of colonial modernity significantly shapes the innovative aesthetics of modernist fiction. Prose of the World explores the global life of this narrative aesthetic, from late-colonial modernism to the present day, focusing on a writer each from Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and India. Ranging from James Joyce's deflated epiphanies to Amit Chaudhuri's disavowal of the grand spectacle of postcolonial national allegories, Majumdar foregrounds the banal as a key instinct of modern and contemporary fiction-one that nevertheless remains submerged because of its antithetical relation to literature's intuitive function to engage or excite. Majumdar asks us to rethink the assumption that banality merely indicates an aesthetic failure. If narrative is traditionally enabled by the tremor, velocity, and excitement of the event, the historical and affective lack implied by the banal produces a narrative force that is radically new precisely because it suspends the conventional impulses of narration.Commonwealth fiction (English)20th centuryHistory and criticismBanality (Philosophy) in literaturePlace (Philosophy) in literatureNarration (Rhetoric)Literature and societyCommonwealth countriesHistory20th centuryElectronic books.Commonwealth fiction (English)History and criticism.Banality (Philosophy) in literature.Place (Philosophy) in literature.Narration (Rhetoric)Literature and societyHistory823/.909Majumdar Saikat1048462MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910462830503321Prose of the world2476764UNINA