Overview
As the pace of cultural globalization accelerates, the discipline of literary studies is undergoing dramatic transformation. Scholars and critics focus increasingly on theorizing difference and complicating the geographical framework defining their approaches. At the same time, Anglophone literature is being created by a remarkably transnational, multicultural group of writers exploring many of the same concerns, including the intersecting effects of colonialism, decolonization, migration, and globalization. Paul Jay surveys these developments, highlighting key debates within literary and cultural studies about the impact of globalization over the past two decades. Global Matters provides a concise, informative overview of theoretical, critical, and curricular issues driving the transnational turn in literary studies and how these issues have come to dominate contemporary global fiction as well. Through close, imaginative readings Jay analyzes the intersecting histories of colonialism, decolonization, and globalization engaged by an array of texts from Africa, Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke, and Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness. A timely intervention in the most exciting debates within literary studies, Global Matters is a comprehensive guide to the transnational nature of Anglophone literature today and its relationship to the globalization of Western culture.
Full Product Details
Author: Paul Jay
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Imprint: Cornell University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.50cm
, Height: 2.20cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.907kg
ISBN: 9780801449000
ISBN 10: 0801449006
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 15 September 2010
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
<p> In Global Matters, Paul Jay provides invaluable guidance to recent debates about globalization and illuminates the contemporary novel's vibrant transnationalism. This judicious and remarkably lucid book lays the ground for exciting new developments in transnational literary scholarship. -Jahan Ramazani, author of A Transnational Poetics
""Paul Jay offers an interesting study of a popular theme of the international nature.""-Dr. Zulfiqar Ali, The Midwest Book Review (November 2014) ""Global Matters is a lucid and extremely valuable synthesis of some of the trickiest and most interesting scholarship of the past twenty years. Judicious yet also pleasantly polemical, and anchored in refreshing readings of some much-read texts, it will be the object of heartfelt gratitude on the part of students and teachers alike.""-Bruce Robbins, Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University ""In Global Matters, Paul Jay provides invaluable guidance to recent debates about globalization and illuminates the contemporary novel's vibrant transnationalism. This judicious and remarkably lucid book lays the ground for exciting new developments in transnational literary scholarship.""-Jahan Ramazani, author of A Transnational Poetics ""Global Matters displays admirable clarity and fairness in its presentation of current debates about globalization and postcoloniality in relation to the transnational turn in literary studies. Paul Jay's book is timely and well conceived. It has two parts that mirror each other: the first presents an overview of cultural and literary theory dealing with transnationalism and the second provides readings of selected texts to demonstrate the necessity of transnational approaches to literature.""-Susan Stanford Friedman, Virginia Woolf Professor of English and Women's Studies and Sally Mead Hands Bascom Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison ""Global Matters offers a thoughtful and balanced consideration of recent theories of globalization. Paul Jay's insistence that the long histories of colonialism shape contemporary global matters and that we cannot choose between the cultural and economic dimensions of globalization is especially welcome.""-Ania Loomba, Catharine Bryson Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania ""Global Matters helps the reader make sense of some of the most exciting developments and complex disagreements in transnational literary and cultural studies over the past two decades. Paul Jay argues that novelists have responded creatively to the apparently increased volume of global exchanges that have taken place since the end of the Cold War, and he connects these developments to the U.S. civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s. Jay displays an admirable ability to synthesize complex ideas about transnationality and to show how they can enrich the study of literature.""-Sanjay Krishnan, Boston University
Author Information
Paul Jay is Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author most recently of Contingency Blues: The Search for Foundations in American Criticism. Visit his blog for this book at jayglobalmatters.weebly.com.
