Multiple Belongings in the Shaping of the Literary Imagination Cover Image

Multiple Belongings in the Shaping of the Literary Imagination
Multiple Belongings in the Shaping of the Literary Imagination

Author(s): Nandini Bhautoo-Dewnarain
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Comparative Study of Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: postcolonialism; orality; nation; nationalism

Summary/Abstract: This article proposes to explore the nature of multiple imaginative belongings as this is inscribed within various Mauritian literary texts, written in three different languages. The tyranny of the desire for national belonging has known varied fortunes over the last 200 years as nationalism has been simultaneously praised and derided in the construction of the national imaginary. In the context of multicultural Mauritius, the complexity of the nationalist paradigm exists in parallel with numerous transnational narratives of diasporic belonging. Nowhere is this more visible than in the literary output, where writers play with the often overlapping realities of multiple belongings.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 10
  • Page Range: 112-127
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: English