Writing Within/Without/About Sri Lanka - Discourses of Cartography, History and Translation in Selected Works by Michael Ondaatje

Paola Brusasco's study offers an original insight into Sri Lankan literature in English and an exploration of cultural, social, and linguistic issues at the basis of the country's ethnic conflict. By focussing on two distinctive and representative writers, both Burghers, yet with different personal histories, Brusasco confronts issues of cartography, history, and language, all contributing to a specific definition of identity. Both Ondaatje and Muller are outsiders, the former because of his diasporic existence, the latter because of his ex-centricity within the reality of a divided country where the legacy of British colonialism and the process of redefinition following independence in 1948, as well as matters of geography and history, become crucial to writers. Brusasco achieves the aim of re-directing theoretical assumptions about the two authors' works to the benefit of both academic and non specialist audiences, thus re-positioning Sri Lankan literature in the ever-growing context of South Asian studies in English. Ondaatje's The English Patient, Running in the Family, and, most prominently, Anil's Ghost, as well as Muller's Burgher trilogy and Colombo: A Novel, are here analyzed in the light of the writings by Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, and Hayden White. Quite original is the discourse on language that is, translatability looked at from cross-cultural and deconstructionist perspectives which include the debate around domesticating and foreignizing otherness, the difficult relation between Sinhala and Tamil in Sri Lanka, the controversial local variety of English, and its implications at the social level. Professor Carmen Concilio, University of Turin.

Auteur

Paola Brusasco holds a PhD in English Studies and has taught English Language and Translation as a fixed-term lecturer at the University of Turin (Italy). Her main research interests are Post-colonial Studies and Translation Studies. She has published a number of articles, mainly, but not exclusively, on Sri Lankan writing in English with particular focus on issues of identity, human rights, and child soldiers in works by M. Ondaatje, R. Gunesekera, C. Muller, Shobasakthi, and has translated into Italian both classics (e.g. E. Brontë's Wuthering Heights, R. L. Stevenson's Olalla) and works by contemporary authors such as J. Clement, C. Davidson, and R. Banks.