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Book review
De Silva, Lakshmi
De Silva, Lakshmi
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Book_Revie1.pdf
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Abstract
"It was only after Sri Lanka gained Independence from Britain in 1948 that literature of significance in English was written and there evolved a sufficient mass of this literature to form a field in itself. But Sri Lankan Writing in English originated much earlier than 1948, since it was in 1917 that the first English-language novel was published. If the literature in English written before Independence may not be very rewarding in literary-critical terms, it is necessary to acquire some notion of it for a full understanding of the literature that emerged after Independence. A reference work on Sri Lankan Writing in English like K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar's Indian Writing in English was long due. This new book by D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke, who has done much to familiarize the world with Sri Lankan writing and authored landmark studies of colonial literature, Joseph Conrad, and Salman Rushdie, is the first comprehensive study of the subject. While it does take into account the literature before Independence, it focuses primarily on the period after 1948. Literature is considered here in its widest sense as it appears in newspapers and journals as well as in books. In his introduction, Goonetilleke provides the world context for Sri Lankan literature, focusing on the expansion of the literary canon in recent times with the accommodation through controversy and resistance of new interests, postcolonial, black, feminist, cultural and contemporary. An overall picture of the evolution of Sri Lankan English literature then follows. Its emergence is explained in terms of social forces (especially the populist/nationalist revolution of 1956) as well as literary ones.
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2006
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With permission of the license/copyright holder