<scp>E</scp>nglish Studies, the Academy, and Fiction

English Studies is the broad disciplinary grouping that encompasses all literary and cultural production in the English language – all forms of literature, certainly, but also literary theory and often even non‐literary forms of cultural production such as film and television. The discipline is staffed by members of the professoriate who make up “the Academy,” a self‐regulating group which also includes noted writers, literary publishers, and other literary opinion makers such as reviewers. While there is nothing official about it (unlike L'Académie française, responsible for ruling on the French language), the uncompromising singularity of the term “Academy” acknowledges its power in adjudicating the canon. The canon of texts that comprise the objects of study in English Studies – what is most often read and taught and studied and written about – is (more or less) selected by the Academy. The Academy does evolve, if slowly: people retire, once junior graduate students become faculty members, and the institutional interests of departments of English Studies shift (often, at the behest of academic administrators). Over the twentieth century, the English canon has changed dramatically in an attempt to take into account questions of politics as well as aesthetics. In the context of World Literature and its subfield World Fiction, it could be said that the main project of the introduction of this subject into the bastion of English Studies has been to remake the discipline in the light of critical theory – especially of postcolonialism. Where postcolonial theory provides a framework for what Robert Young calls a “more engaged politics with objectives of social justice and equality … inspired by memories of resistance,” World Literature often provides the literary (and cultural) texts for this study (166). As grand as postcolonialism's purpose is and infinite as this literature appears, there are some limiting parameters. Although fiction is the most widely read and studied postcolonial genre, World Fiction written in English is nonetheless an altogether smaller sampling than all World Literature, which at its broadest includes other languages and genres. Fiction identified as British, Irish, or American (and thus more likely to be part of the traditional canon) may also be exempt – because the word “World” when used to delimit English‐language literature or fiction connotes texts that do not originate in the United Kingdom or the United States. In general, then, and not excluding many exceptions, since the “origin” of writing is often the subject of debate, English‐language fiction produced in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean (mostly but not exclusively in nations once colonized by Britain) and in the former settler colonies of Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand may be termed “World Fiction in English.”

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