In the Shadow of Language: from Joyce to Okri

Abstract

I begin with Joyce for two reasons. First, because he is a touchstone for literary modernism. I shall return to that first reason at the end. For now I want to dwell on my second reason for choosing him, which is that he is Irish, and Irish works of literature also have virtue as touchstones for many issues in Commonwealth literature. Declan Kiberd’s Inventing Ireland has turned the lights lit by writers of the decolonizing and nationalizing world back on the terrain of Irish literary culture, throwing it into a new relief. By the same token, the Irish case can serve as paradigm for Commonwealth and international literature in English, as Kiberd himself anticipates: ‘My belief is that the introduction of the Irish case to the debate will complicate, extend and in some cases expose the limits of current models of postcoloniality.’1 Irish litera-ture in English is the first of such decolonizing and nationalizing literatures, and it is founded on an historical experience which includes the whole range of colonial and postcolonial experience, with two exceptions — downright slavery and voluntary union, as in the case of Scotland.