Commonwealth of Letters

Kalliney, Peter J.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.001.0001

Cited by 245 publications

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“…As Peter J. Kalliney notes regarding Commonwealth writers, many accepted entry-level positions well below their skill level at well-respected organizationsincluding the BBCbecause the job represented some form of establishment recognition. 46 Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul recounts that he began working on his first book, Miguel Street, on BBC letterhead as it felt 'less likely to attract failure'. 47 Cultural capital, of course, will not keep food on the table.…”

Section: Nothing Ventured Nothing Gainedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing Global Britishness on the BBC'sCommonwealth of Song(1953–1961)

NELSON¹

2022

Twentieth-Century Music

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Part of the United Kingdom's national reconstruction following the Second World War was reforming its self-image as a global power in light of imperial decline. This recasting took place across political and cultural spheres and emphasized the Commonwealth, idealized as a friendly collection of current and former colonies linked by British culture. In this article, I demonstrate how music broadcasting functioned as a site of diplomacy, using white, middle-class taste for light entertainment to reinforce British values at the Empire's twilight. I focus on musical depictions of the Commonwealth on the BBC radio programme Commonwealth of Song. Using archival records, I reconstruct debates concerning Commonwealth representation and its importance to British citizens. I argue that Commonwealth of Song was a site of testing and reformulating new sonic constructions of globally minded ‘Britishness’ in the 1950s, yet conflicting messaging about what musics and people should represent the Commonwealth led to a lukewarm reception.

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Section: Nothing Ventured Nothing Gainedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hearing Global Britishness on the BBC'sCommonwealth of Song(1953–1961)

NELSON¹

2022

Twentieth-Century Music

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“…The "Dominions Project" led to working parties investigating Canadian library holdings of books dealing with Australia and New Zealand (McDougall and Whitlock, 1987: 4), and some of these preoccupations were central in the various working parties on language, literature, teaching and, especially, into library holdings of Commonwealth Literature in the UK. In Africa and the then West Indies, the English and English-related curriculum of so-called Asquith special colleges of the University of London also contributed to a flurry of little magazines that provided spaces for the early creative and scholarly work of individuals that would later go on to have thriving academic and artistic careers (Kalliney, 2013;Lindfors, 1987;Low, 2011;Okunoye, 1999). In North America, particularly in Pennsylvania, Austin (Texas), and Kingston (Ontario), courses were taught and scholarly sub-groups met under the banner, "British Commonwealth Literature"; a sub-group, tabled at the 1958 annual Modern Languages Association conference, would later become the "Division of English Literature Other than British and American" with its own house journal, World Literature Written in English, published from 1966(McLeod, 1989Watson, 2000).…”

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confidence: 99%

Professing the common wealth of literature, Leeds 1957–1969

Low

2015

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature

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Drawing on the work of Simon Gikandi and Peter Kalliney, this article addresses the imbrication of cultural diplomacy, language and politics, and cultural capital that facilitated the rise of Commonwealth Literature at the University of Leeds. It offers a brief account of the disciplinary gestation of "Commonwealth Literature" at Leeds, addressing some of the foundational arguments in this campaign; revisits the Leeds conference of 1964 and the aid it garnered from governmental agencies; and examines the cultural work that the field is made to perform in documentation and lectures. The paper also addresses the creation of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature in the light of the Arthur Ravenscroft papers at the University of Leeds, sieving the surviving papers for interventions on the spread of English language and literary studies, and the cultural capital that they are said to help cultivate.

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Mulk Raj Anand's World Literature: Humanism, Crowds, Caste, and Modernism

Elam¹

2019

A Companion to World Literature

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Mulk Raj Anand (1905–2004) was a South Asian novelist who wrote primarily in English. He was loosely affiliated with both the Bloomsbury Group in London and the All India Progressive Writers' Association in India. His most famous novel, Untouchable (1935), explores a day in the life of an untouchable (Dalit) boy. This chapter uses Untouchable to draw out the relationship between modernist sociological thought and literary production; the relationship between South Asian English and British English; and the politics of literature in South Asia.

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Commonwealth of Letters

Cited by 245 publications

References 0 publications

Hearing Global Britishness on the BBC'sCommonwealth of Song(1953–1961)

Hearing Global Britishness on the BBC'sCommonwealth of Song(1953–1961)

Professing the common wealth of literature, Leeds 1957–1969

Mulk Raj Anand's World Literature: Humanism, Crowds, Caste, and Modernism

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