Over a period of more than thirty years, Wolfgang Zach has dedicated his considerable critical skills and enormous energy to the study and promotion of literature in English. In that time, he has established himself as an impressive scholar and an accomplished teacher and administrator. From an early interest in eighteenth-century English literature to an enthusiastic advocacy of the New Literatures in English, Wolfgang Zach has sought to broaden the boundaries of literary study, embracing interdisciplinarity and incorporating important international voices into the folds of English literature. On the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, this Festschrift honours and celebrates Wolfgang Zach's distinguished and admirable academic career. The essays collected here represent the wide field of studies that has characterized Wolfgang Zach's own scholarship. Issues of identity, language and liminality reappear throughout these works, which include new critiques of traditional subjects such as Shakespeare, Yeats and Joyce, essays on immigrant writing in Australia, Canada and India, as well as works on contemporary authors such as Wilson Harris, Chang-rae Lee and Brian Friel. The collection is international in authorship as well as investigative scope, featuring scholars from seventeen countries in six continents. In a period when postcolonial literature and theory have transformed traditional perceptions of the English literary canon, Wolfgang Zach, through his own research and his active fostering of international academic networks, has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to the scholarly dialogue that addresses this fundamental and richly complex paradigm shift.
