Happy in the Mother Country: Liminality in Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners
Date
2019-06-01Author
Abstract
Liminality theory remains underused in discussions of post World War II Caribbean
writing in the UK. This essay re-considers Samuel Selvon’s seminal 1956 novel The Lonely
Londoners through the lens of liminality. In this essay, liminality is used as a lens through
which the novel’s characters, structure, locations, and language are viewed. The Lonely
Londoners emerges as the prototypical liminal text, with each of its elements occupying an
interstitial space between modernist experiment and a postcolonial alternative—or challenge to
imperialist fictions.
Description
Essay included in Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures
Citation : Joseph, A. (2019). Happy in the Mother Country: Liminality in Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners. Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures, 3 (1), pp.103-116.
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- School of Humanities [1674]