Epistolarity and World Literature, 1980–2010

222 Pages·2017·2.919 MB·English

by  Rachel Bower

NEW COMPARISONS IN WORLD LITERATURE
RACHEL BOWER
Epistolarity
and World
Literature,
1980–2010
New Comparisons in World Literature
Series editors
Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Neil Lazarus
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
“This book, like the literary letters it examines, is intelligently attuned to the inti-
mate to-and-fro between author and reader, in particular what happens when this
dialogue takes place across fraught historical and political lines. Addressing why
novelists from across the world returned to the epistolary form at the end of the
long twentieth century, Bower closely analyses an impressive range of authors to
show how and why words travel from I to you.”
— Dr Jonathan Ellis, Senior Lecturer, University of Sheffield, UK
“This lucid and original book explores the relationships between the epistolary
novel, the world and postcolonial literature with a keen, critical eye and a nuanced
concern for the material productions of texts, focusing on detailed readings as
well as a wider global background. In doing so, Bower both reviews and reforms
part of the field, and so this book should be read by those with an interest in the
contemporary novel, postcolonialism and literary theory more generally.”
— Professor Robert Eaglestone, Royal Holloway University
of London, UK
“Theoretically bold and unafraid to make compelling aesthetic judgments,
Epistolarity and World Literature is among those rare and valuable books that
make a serious attempt to overcome the gap between close reading and historical
context, between formal structure and social structure, literary object and literary
field.”
— Professor Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
New Comparisons in World Literature offers a fresh perspective on
one of the most exciting current debates in humanities by approach-
ing ‘world literature’ not in terms of particular kinds of reading but as
a particular kind of writing. We take ‘world literature’ to be that body
of writing that registers in various ways, at the levels of form and con-
tent, the historical experience of capitalist modernity. We aim to publish
works that take up the challenge of understanding how literature regis-
ters both the global extension of ‘modern’ social forms and relations and
the peculiar new modes of existence and experience that are engendered
as a result. Our particular interest lies in studies that analyse the registra-
tion of this decisive historical process in literary consciousness and affect.
Editorial Board
Dr. Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois, USA
Dr. Bo G. Ekelund, University of Stockholm, Sweden
Dr. Dorota Kolodziejczyk, Wroclaw University, Poland
Professor Paulo de Medeiros, University of Warwick, UK
Dr. Robert Spencer, University of Manchester, UK
Professor Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Canada
Professor Peter Hitchcock, Baruch College, USA
Dr. Ericka Beckman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Dr. Sarah Brouillette, Carleton University, Canada
Professor Supriya Chaudhury, Jadavpur University, India
Professor Stephen Shapiro, University of Warwick, UK
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/15067
Rachel Bower
Epistolarity and World
Literature, 1980–2010
Rachel Bower
University of Leeds
Leeds, UK
New Comparisons in World Literature
ISBN 978-3-319-58165-1 ISBN 978-3-319-58166-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-58166-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017940216
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
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A
cknowledgements
I am grateful to my family, friends, teachers and colleagues, on whom I
have relied for support, conversation and love. Priya Gopal has taught
me to be my own critic and judge and has been a formidable source of
inspiration and critique. I owe a deep debt of gratitude to Julie Bower,
Sarah Bower, Tony Bower, Marilyn Phillips, Jonathan Phillips and Dewi
Williams. I am also grateful for the support of Jeremy Clines, Manar
Makhoul, John McLeod, Tom Overton, Greg Radick, Graham Riach,
Alex Thomson and John Whale. To those who have read and com-
mented on portions of this manuscript, a special thanks: Ed Charlton,
Jonathan Ellis, Ben Etherington, Josie Gill, Steve Howard, Mike
Perfect, Chris Warnes and Jarad Zimbler. I am particularly grateful
to Neil Lazarus and Robert Eaglestone for their meticulous readings
of the manuscript. I extend my gratitude to the strong women who
have travelled with me on this journey: Jo Bellis , Malika Booker, Lara
Brettell, Roseann Campbell, Louise Clines, Jo Craigwood, Chloe Forfitt,
Charlotte Gale, Colette Harvey, Nancy Hooley, Hannah Morrison,
Helen Mort, Dina Mousawi, Helena Perry, Beryl Pong, Cat Rashid,
Vidya Ravi, Rachel Roberti, Carrie Smeeton, Katherine Thompson,
Johanna Van de Voort, Emma Wilkinson and my Moonlodge sisters.
This book would not have been possible without Jude and Esme’s won-
derful carers: Clare Harvey, Zoë Hertogs and all at Sheffield Woodland
Kindergarten. I am grateful for generous support from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council, the Centre for Arts, Social Sciences
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
and Humanities (CRASSH), Peter and Susan Cheney, Clare College,
Cambridge, and the Leeds Humanities Research Institute. For the
generous permission to include illustrations and extracts from let-
ters and manuscripts I thank John Berger. I am grateful to the editors
of Canadian Literature (219.4, 2013), the Journal of Commonwealth
Literature (49.3, 2014) and On John Berger: Telling Stories (2015), who
published various parts of this book in article form, for kindly allow-
ing me to use some of that material here again. My thanks also go to
Nielsen BookScan for generous provision of sales data. Finally, I thank
Jake Phillips for his endurance, love and intellectual support and beloved
Jude and Esme whose warm bodies, unchecked anger and quick ques-
tions remind me, yet again, to question the way things are. This book is
dedicated to them both.
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
2 Prison Letters and Epistolary Encryption: John Berger’s
From A to X (2008) 31
3 Searching for Letters in the Archive: Amitav Ghosh’s
In an Antique Land (1992) and Michael Ondaatje’s
In the Skin of a Lion (1987) 69
4 Writing to the Future: J.M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron (1990) 107
5 The Limits of the Letter: Alice Walker’s
The Color Purple (1982) 137
6 Crossing the Seven Seas: Transnational and
Cross-Linguistic Dialogue in Monica Ali’s
Brick Lane (2003) 167
7 Conclusion 199
Bibliography 207
Index 209
vii
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 1 Hand and torch, From A to X 59
Fig. 2 Exit tonight, From A to X 60
ix
A
bstrAct
This book examines the striking resurgence of the literary letter at the
end of the long twentieth century. It shows how authors returned to
epistolary conventions to create dialogue across national, linguistic and
cultural borders, and it repositions a range of contemporary and post-
colonial authors never considered together before, including Monica
Ali, John Berger, Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Walker.
The book develops a new comparative mode of criticism, combining
Erich Auerbach’s Ansatzpunkt (starting point) with archival research and
Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the literary field.
Through a series of situated readings, the book shows how the return
to epistolarity is underpinned by ideals relating to dialogue and human
connection. Several of the works use letters to present non-anglophone
material to the anglophone reader. Others employ letters to chal-
lenge policed borders—the prison, occupied territory, the nation state.
Elsewhere, letters are used to connect correspondents in different cul-
tural and linguistic contexts. Common to all of the works considered in
this book is the appeal that they make to us, as readers, and the responsi-
bility they place on us to respond to this address.
The book consistently seeks to overcome the apparent divide between
formal analysis and historical description. By taking the epistle as its start-
ing point and pursuing Auerbach’s speculative ideal of Weltliteratur, it
turns away from the dominant trend of ‘distant reading’ in world lit-
erature, and shows that it is in the close situated analysis of form and
xi