The book attempts to disclose various representations of ugliness in discourses ranging from Shakespeare’s colonialism to Patrick White’s, J. M. Coetzee’s and Ayi Kwei Armah’s postcolonialism. Attention is also given to American Indian captivity narratives and contemporary British and Irish theatre, where ugliness is the manifestation of the human.

This volume explores the notions of excess, intemperance and overabundance in cultures and literatures of both the English- and Chinese-speaking worlds. It concentrates on some aspects of literary and cultural meanings of excess(es) in various theories and practices of these antipodean territories of human experience and consciousnesses.