What Is a Classic? revisits the famous question posed by critics from Sainte-Beuve and T. S. Eliot to J. M. Coetzee to ask how classics emanate from postcolonial histories and societies. Exploring definitive trends in twentieth- and twenty-first century English and Anglophone literature, Ankhi Mukherjee demonstrates the relevance of the question of the classic for the global politics of identifying and perpetuating so-called core texts. Emergent canons are scrutinized in the context of the wider cultural phenomena of book prizes, the translation and distribution of world literatures, and multimedia adaptations of world classics. Throughout, Mukherjee attunes traditional literary critical concerns to the value contestations mobilizing postcolonial and world literature. The breadth of debates and topics she addresses, as well as the book's ambitious historical schema, which includes South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the West Indies, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and North America, set this study apart from related titles on the bookshelf today.
"Mukherjee's examination of postcolonial rewriting doubtlessly constitutes a major contribution to current postcolonial literary criticism, introducing new perspectives into a debate that almost seemed to have reached a dead end. What is a Classic? is both accessible and intellectually sophisticated; moreover, it stands out due to the enormous scope of the material that is used by the author."
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies
"What Is a Classic? is a brilliant intervention, for its willingness to pose directly the question of literary value and the operations of literary criticism in the consecration and preservation of the texts that are then named as 'classic.' Mukherjee's analysis is much closer to the text, and more literary in its sensibilities, than an intervention like Pascale Casanova's; more flexible in its ci
University of Michigan, Contemporary Literature
"What is a classic? Taking her lead from Augustin Sainte-Beuve, T. S. Eliot, and J. M. Coetzee, Ankhi Mukherjee offers an eloquent case for the question's continuing relevance to literature, literary criticism, and, above all, to the language arts of the postcolony. [This book] brings fresh energy to the longstanding study of imperial cultural authority, attending to both the ideological impositi
