Reviews for Islam and the Postcolonial Narrative

The average rating for Islam and the Postcolonial Narrative based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-09-27 00:00:00 Hal Mcdonald Cooper's chief point is that scholars, caught up in analysis of nationalism, have failed to understand literary developments on their own terms. More so than a work about nationalism, then, this is a work about literature, by a literary expert. Cooper argues that scholars (literary scholars and historians alike) have not "adequately explored" the reasons for the rise of "national literatures" as a theme of the nineteenth century. This is key both for understanding the development of nationalism, he argues, and for understanding particular nations. For this reason, he turns to two nations with significant scholarly discussion of nationalism, Russia and Bohemia. Cooper's work is intensely thoughtful and highly detailed, but it does have its missteps. The suggestion that the literary movement towards a national literature created nationalism is simply too large a claim to be proven conclusively here (29). The discussion of education's role is a fascinating way to move this part of his argument forward, but it comes late in the text to clinch his claim that literature, more than other cultural arenas, was the prime mover behind ideas of the nation (229).

Review # 2 was written on 2014-05-27 00:00:00 Ned Burns The essays that I needed from this book were both accurate and relevant. However, there were other essays that I feel were a tad bit too presumptuous and based on opinion. By opinion, I mean that their assertions were not as academically and factually supported as I wanted them to be.