Nation & Narration

Bhabha, in his preface, writes Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully encounter their horizons in the minds eye.

From this seemingly impossibly metaphorical beginning, this volume confronts the realities of the concept of nationhood as it is lived and the profound ambivalence of language as it is written. From Gillian Beers reading of Virginia Woolf, Rachel Bowlbys cultural history of Uncle Toms Cabin and Francis Mulherns study of Leavistes English ethics; to Doris Sommers study of the magical realism of Latin American fiction and Sneja Gunews analysis of Australian writing, Nation and Narration is a celebration of the fact that English is no longer an English national consciousness, which is not nationalist, but is the only thing that will give us an international dimension.