Broader base for English literatures

Press, 9 May 1981, Page 17

Broader base for English literatures

The New English Literatures: cultural nationalism in a changing world. By Bruce King. MacMillan New Literature Handbooks, 1980. 248 pp. $16.95. (Reviewed by Patrick Evans) Language is probably the most durable relic of imperialism, but although people who are not English have been writing in English for centuries, the concept of Commonwealth literature (or, more recently, “New Literatures") is relatively new. Bruce King, of the University of Canterbury, finds a non-Briton, Olaudah Equiano, writing in English as early as 1789, but it was not till the early 1960 s that the first Commonwealth literary conferences were held. Typically, both of these occurred outside the regions whose literatures were being studied; in the United States as part of the M.L.A. organisation in 1962, and in Leeds, England, at the instigation of Norman Jeffares. in 1965. Within Commonwealth countries, the conception of local literatures as indigenous and distinct from the English tradition had long existed (as early as 1877 in India), although coherent regional schools of criticism tended not to develop till the postwar decline of the British Empire. The disjunctions of time and place between the local concept of New literatures and the global concept of New Literatures ought to be noted, for they point to the fundamental questions that must be asked of this form of Commonwealth studies: to what extent does a synthesising approach do justice to each individual emerging national literature? Is the value of collocating national traditions — the Australian with the Pacific, say — simply multiplied when other traditions are gathered in for analysis as well - the New Zealand along with’ the West Indian, the Indian with the West African, the Canadian with the Australian? Is the concept of New Literatures at all meaningful, given its inevitable level of generalisation? Bruce King's survey of New Literatures takes a fundamentally global approach, beginning with the general and moving through regional discussions to the examination of specific texts. It is hard to

imagine anyone approaching this topic now without using this guide; it presents an enormous range of texts and offers a plausible map of the territory. Those travelling in this area for the first time must henceforth follow King. His first three chapters do not make this especially easy. Chapters One and Two are generally historical, beginning with an account of New English literatures before, and then after, the Second World War, which saw the first release of those social energies w’hich, in turn, created genuinely national literatures. This assumption, that one large event might have the same effect throughout the Commonwealth, is typical of the synthetic approach, which assumes that all local traditions evolve along much the same path, give or take a Mansfield or two, and at roughly the same pace. Discussion of such processes is inevitably somewhat stratospheric, and at times King’s generalistions become quite breathtaking (“The First World War was followed throughout the Empire by disillusionment with Europe and its culture and later by an interest in Russian Communism” and "Aestheticism and naturalism developed alongside a colloquial realism in literature”).But if one operates at this height, speed is clearly essential, as well as an attunement to regional variations and oddities in the territory over which one flies. Chapter Three, “New Literatures and Nationalisms,” where Professor King examines the evolution of New Literatures out of the growth of nationalism in Commonwealth countries, is probably the most contentious, and certainly the most interesting, in the book. Nationalism, he argues, “often rsults from rapid urbanisation and industrialisation when a section of those who- have participated in social changes challenge those in power.” Usually urban, it finds myths of authenticity in the rural and in the past, seeking through these myths to promote unity and find validity for itself. Writers are often a part of such movements, gaining much of ' their creative energy from the conflict between the urban and the rural, the present and the past, the imposed and the authentic.

When this generalisation is applied in later chapters to Nigerian or West Indian writers it holds true, since writers like. Achebe or Naipaul obviously derive their energies from the enormous tension that exists between colonial and native cultures. But does the generalisation work for those regions where that tension does not exist at nearly the same intensity? Certainly, it helps us to understandrecent Maori writing; but does it as nicely account for all New Zealand writing? Since King’s chapter on New Zealand is devoted largely to one novel (Sargeson’s “I Saw in My Dream”) which seems to confirm his thesis, the question cannot be said to have been properly tested in this study. It seems, then, that despite its chapters devoted to individual areas and its final chapter, in which three individual novels are examined. Professor King’s work is most valuable for its generalised view. The price of his approach is a lack of engagement with the idiosyncracies and contradictions which give local traditions their colour (a dispassionate stance that may account for the curious neutrality of his prose style); but by its approach he is also provocative, challenging the reader to test his generalisations against particular examples of his own. Five young nuns The Reaping. By Bernard Taylor. Souvenir Press, 1980. 237 pp. $19.25. This is a thriller about a painter who is tricked into accepting a portrait commission to be executed by him in a remote country house. It does not take him long to discover that Something Is Going On. His subject tricks him into having sexual relations with her. There is a mysterious secretary, a. mysterious doctor, and sundry equally mysterious servants. Then, of course, there are the five young nuns and the mysterious tower with a lift. The plot has to do with what the blurb is pleased to call “primitive forces.” Those forces have been at work and have produced a primitive story. — S. G. Erber.