Colonial and Postcolonial Cyprus : Transportal Literatures of Empire, Nationalism, and Sectarianism

This book analyses colonial and postcolonial writing about Cyprus, before and after its independence from the British Empire in 1960. These works are understood as ‘transportal literatures’ in that they navigate the liminal and layered forms of colonialism which impede the freedom of the island, including the residues of British imperialism, the impact of Greek and Turkish nationalisms, and the ethnolinguistic border between north and south. This study puts pressure on the postcolonial discipline by evaluating the unique hegemonic relationship Cyprus has with __three__ metropolitan centres, not one. The print languages associated with each centre (English, Greek, and Turkish) are complicit in neo-colonial activity. Contemporary Cypriot writers address this in order to resist sectarian division and grapple with their deferred postcoloniality. 'The colonial history of Cyprus - a partitioned island in a partitioned world - is as often misunderstood as it is forgotten. Yet, as this timely book shows, this fraught history has much to offer postcolonial studies, not least as a catalyst for the 'transportal' literature with which contemporary Cypriot writers, amidst continuing geopolitical pressures, seek imaginative openings to a more fully decolonized, less ideologically polarized world.' -- Professor Graham Huggan, University of Leeds, UK 'Daniele Nunziata brilliantly investigates the close postcolonial parallels and yet specific local divergences between partitioned Cyprus in the later decades of the twentieth century, and the wider postcolonial and post-independence world. His analysis adapts and refines insights from postcolonial and world literature theoretical frameworks to shed illuminating light on Cypriot writing, while at the same time demonstrating the connectedness of this literature to the writing of other postcolonial nations including South Africa, India and Pakistan.' -- Professor Elleke Boehmer, University of Oxford, UK This book analyses colonial and postcolonial writing about Cyprus, before and after its independence from the British Empire in 1960. These works are understood as 'transportal literatures' in that they navigate the liminal and layered forms of colonialism which impede the freedom of the island, including the residues of British imperialism, the impact of Greek and Turkish nationalisms, and the ethnolinguistic border between north and south. This study puts pressure on the postcolonial discipline by evaluating the unique hegemonic relationship Cyprus has with three metropolitan centres, not one. The print languages associated with each centre (English, Greek, and Turkish) are complicit in neo-colonial activity. Contemporary Cypriot writers address this in order to resist sectarian division and grapple with their deferred postcoloniality Preface Acknowledgements A Note on Terminology Contents About the Author Abbreviations 1 ‘The Key of Western Asia’: An Introduction to Transportal Literatures Historical, Linguistic, and Literary Background The Problem of Cypriot Literatures and Postcolonialism Cyprus and the UK Cyprus and Western Europe Cyprus and Greco-Turkish Nationalisms Questions of Form: Travel and Transportal Literatures ‘Postcolonial’ Travel Writing Transportal Literatures 2 ‘A Business of Some Heat’: Sexuality, Disease, and Gendered Orientalism on Venus’ Island, 1878–1973 Cyprus, Degeneration, and Gendered Orientalism The Homosocial Segregation of Empire ‘I Am Bound to Speak’: British Women’s Responses to Orientalism Conclusions 3 Re-imagining the Cypriot Nation: Writing-Back to the Colonial Travelogue, 1964–1974 ‘Postcolonial’ Tactics: Costas Montis’ Closed Doors and Taner Baybars’ Plucked in a Far-Off Land Intersecting Genres Writing-Back to the British Colonial Book Languages as/and Cutting Instruments Writing-Back to Nationalisms Conclusions 4 Travelling Across the Buffer Zone: Intersections in Language, Genre, and Identity, 2000–2013 Re-writing the Limits of Nationalist Partitions Counter-Travelling the Buffer Zone The Transportal Language of the Buffer Zone The Homes of the Buffer Zone Poems of Homelessness and the Unhomely Conclusions 5 Re-gendering Borders: Partitions in Contemporary Cypriot Women’s Writing Rewriting History from the Periphery Re-claiming Gendered Spaces The Closed Doors of Gender Rejecting the ‘Provincial’ Through Translation as Resistance Translating Across Mother-Tongues and Father-Tongues Confronting Father-Tongues in the No-Man’s-Land of Translation Distanced Readings of Gender Conclusions 6 Conclusions Bibliography Author Index Subject Index