• Denis Fonge Tembong

  Author

Commonwealth Literature gained prominence and became an attraction to
scholarship by 1960. A term habitually used interchangeably with ‘Postcolonial Literature’ is a
hot commodity these days. However popular Commonwealth Literature is today, the concept is
notoriously difficult to define. The passage of time rendered it vague, ambiguous and hard to
delimit its scope, especially, with the cropping up of the new form of it known as ‘Postcolonial
Literature’. The overlapping features and concerns of Commonwealth and Postcolonial
Literature, made it even more disturbing to situate it amongst world literatures. In analyzing it
the tendency for scholars has often been to switch from Commonwealth to Postcolonial
Literature and vice versa. This paper argues that although Commonwealth and Postcolonial
Literature are twin expressions by virtue of their closely related preoccupations, they are
different and should not be considered as alternative terms. To sort out the common confusion in
the use of the two terms, the paper proposes in a critical and elaborate manner, definitions,
characteristics and differences between the expressions (Commonwealth/Postcolonial
Literature).

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