FRASER, Robert, Book History Through Postcolonial Eyes. Rewriting the Script, New York / London, Routledge, 2008, 224 p.
ISBN 978-0-415-40294-1
RÉSUMÉ
This surprising study draws together the disparate fields ofpostcolonial theory and book history in a challenging and illuminatingway.
Robert Fraser proposes that we now look beyond the traditionalmethods of the Anglo-European bibliographic paradigm, and learn toappreciate instead the diversity of shapes that verbal expression hasassumed across different societies. This change of attitude willencourage students and researchers to question developmentallyconceived models of communication, and move instead to a re-formulationof just what is meant by a book, an author, a text.
Fraser illustrates his combined approach with comparative casestudies of print, script and speech cultures in South Asia and Africa,before panning out to examine conflicts and paradoxes arising inparallel contexts. The re-orientation of approach and the freshness ofview offered by this volume will foster understanding and creativecollaboration between scholars of different outlooks, while offering aradical critique to those identified in its concluding section aspurveyors of global literary power.
TABLE DES MATIÈRES
Preface List of Plates and Tables
Acknowledgements
Part One: Repositionings
1. The Problematics of Print
2. Scripts and ManuscriptS
Part Two: Places
3. Transmitting the Word in South Asia
4. Transmitting the Word in Africa Part Three: Powers
5. Resistance and Adaptation
6. Communication and Authority
7. Licensed Policeman and Literary Protestors
8. The Power of the Consumer
Works Cited and Bibliography Index
BIOGRAPHIE
Robert Fraser has published books on Proust, J.G. Frazer, Ben Okri, African poetryand postcolonial fiction. He is co-editor with Mary Hammond of thetwo-volume Books Without Borders (2008), and also enjoys aparallel career as a biographer. Professor of English at the OpenUniversity, he is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of theRoyal Asiatic Society.