The "New" English Literatures in Historical and Political Perspective: Attempts toward a Comparative View of North/South Relationships in "Commonwealth Literature"

Abstract

strong tendencies toward replacing attempts at comprehensive and comparative models of investigation into generally structural, linguistic, thematic, and cultural similarities and dissimilarities of the new English literatures2 with microstructural methodological considerations. Among these we notice, first and foremost, political parameters of nation, continent, and region.3 When we compare this development-which has been clearly noticeable since the mid-1970s-with the debates of the previous decade4 we note that the term literature is being gradually replaced by designations such as Canadian literature, literature, African literature, and so on.5 Although this is not a uniform development-the discussion in other English speaking areas of the world (for example, in Africa or the West Indies) is informed less by considerations of than by those of ethnicity-this tendency toward nation reflects a revitalization of methodologies which had been considered outdated, if not outlived. On the surface, this renewed interest in a concept of is, of course, intimately related to a revival of nationalistic ideologies and policies in the so-called First World or the metropolitan centers of the world during the last two decades.6 In substance it reflects, however, the relationship of semiperipheral and peripheral countries-in the parlance of Immanuel Wallerstein and others7-to the politico-economic centers. Thus we notice that intellectual attempts at defining one's identity in terms of nationality are especially prevalent in semiperipheral countries, such as in the case of the Commonwealth in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, and also in white South Africa. On the other hand, the search for identity in peripheral countries such as Kenya, Jamaica, Trinidad, black South Africa, or among ethnic minority groups such as the Australian Aborigines or the New