EMPIRE AND POETIC VOICE -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Decolonizing Literary Identity -- 1. Ideological Ambiguities of "Writing Back": Anita Desai and George Lamming in the Heart of Darkness -- 2. Revising Indigenous Precursors, Reimagining Social Ideals: Tagore's The Home and the World and Valmiki's Ramayana -- 3. Subaltern Myths Drawn from the Colonizer: Dream on Monkey Mountain and the Revolutionary Jesus -- 4. Preserving the Voice of Ancestors: Yoruba Myth and Ritual in The Palm-Wine Drinkard -- 5. Outdoing the Colonizer: Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, Walcott -- 6. Indigenous Tradition and the Individual Talent: Agha Shahid Ali, Laila/Majnoon, and the Ghazal -- Afterword: "We Are All Africans": The Universal Privacy of Tradition -- Notes -- Glossary of Selected Theoretical Concepts -- Works Cited -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.