Epic proportions : post-epic verse-novels and postcolonial critique

My thesis is based on the premise that verse-novels occupy a marginalised and
\ncontested position in contemporary literature: as they tread the generic boundaries of
\npoetry and prose writing, they are always marked by their incongruous nature. This
\nmakes for uncomfortable reading as expectations are disrupted and undermined, and, for
\nthe poet, the adoption of the verse-novel form becomes both a risky and consciously
\npolitical move. Each of the verse-novels that I consider is self-conscious of its
\nanomalous generic affiliations and utilises them in order to replicate the postcolonial
\npolitics of the text. These texts all engage with the verse-novel form in different ways
\nand draw attention to its problematic and marginal nature. This is used to highlight their
\npostcolonial nature, as they are all concerned with matters of racial and national identity
\nin a world where these categories are complicated.
\nThe commonality in these works is their relationships with epic form, in this
\nthesis I identify this as a post-epic mode of writing. My study is based on the relationship
\nbetween poetic form and postcolonial critique; it focuses upon three texts: the Australian
\npoet Les Murray's Fredy Neptune, the Canadian poet Anne Carson's Autobiography of
\nRed, and British writer Bernardine Evaristo's The Emperor's Babe. These texts and their
\nauthors call for a reconsideration of postcolonialism; this is both demonstrative of a
\nconceptual shift towards global notions of identity, whilst also being problematic in
\nterms of the political commitment of the texts. Each of these works demonstrates an
\nawareness of the contradictory nature of their positions as they shy away from Utopian
\nvisions. In line with this, my aim is to demonstrate the way in which the self-reflexive
\nemployment of experimental poetry compliments an engagement with the transformative
\naspect of contemporary postcolonial politics.

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