What Is a Classic?: Postcolonial Rewriting and Invention of the Canon (Cultural Memory in the Present)

__What Is a Classic?__ revisits the famous question posed by critics from Sainte-Beuve and T. S. Eliot to J. M. Coetzee to ask how classics emanate from postcolonial histories and societies. Exploring definitive trends in twentieth- and twenty-first century English and Anglophone literature, Ankhi Mukherjee demonstrates the relevance of the question of the classic for the global politics of identifying and perpetuating so-called core texts. Emergent canons are scrutinized in the context of the wider cultural phenomena of book prizes, the translation and distribution of world literatures, and multimedia adaptations of world classics. Throughout, Mukherjee attunes traditional literary critical concerns to the value contestations mobilizing postcolonial and world literature. The breadth of debates and topics she addresses, as well as the book's ambitious historical schema, which includes South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and North America, set this study apart from related titles on the bookshelf today. "What Is a Classic? revisits the famous question posed by critics from Sainte-Beuve and T.S. Eliot to J.M. Coetzee to ask how classics emanate from postcolonial histories and societies. Exploring definitive trends in twentieth- and twenty-first century English and Anglophone literature, Mukherjee demonstrates the relevance of the question of the classic for the global politics of identifying and perpetuating so-called core texts. Emergent canons are scrutinized in the context of the wider cultural phenomena of book prizes, the translation and distribution of world literatures, and multimedia adaptations of world classics. The breadth of debates and politics she addresses, as well as the book's ambitious historical schema, which includes the literatures of five continents, set this study apart from related titles on the bookshelf today."--Page 4 of cover Content: "What is a classic?" : international literary criticism and the classic question -- What is a novel? : Conrad, Said, Naipaul -- "Best of the world's classics" : Derek Walcott between classics and the classic -- "Pip was my story" : rereading, counterreading, and nonreading -- "Yes, sir, I was the one who got away" : postcolonial emergence and the vernacular canon -- Hamarashakespeare.com : Shakespeare in India -- Postscript : the why of the what. This work revisits the famous question posed by critics from Sainte-Beuve and T.S. Eliot to J.M. Coetzee to ask how classics emanate from postcolonial histories and societies. Exploring definitive trends in 20th and 21st century English and Anglophone literature, Mukherjee demonstrates the relevance of the question of the classic for the global politics of identifying and perpetuating so-called core texts Examines the residual influence of the Eurocentric literary canon in the age of postcolonial and world literature and looks at emergent formations of canons and classics at large.