Alan Gillis
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199277094
- eISBN:
- 9780191707483
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199277094.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter compares and contrasts Patrick Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger with Austin Clarke’s Night and Morning. It explores the manner in which Kavanagh vandalizes stereotypes of rural Ireland and ...
More
This chapter compares and contrasts Patrick Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger with Austin Clarke’s Night and Morning. It explores the manner in which Kavanagh vandalizes stereotypes of rural Ireland and pastoral poetry, and focuses on central paradoxes of the poem. It argues that The Great Hunger is a savage indictment of a certain form of Romanticism, but is also deeply in thrall to it. It then moves to consider the poem as a highly sophisticated play upon multiple perspectives and tropes, arguing that this ironic sophistication constitutes the crux of its significance. The chapter then discusses the early ‘Irish mode’ of Austin Clarke, and examines Samuel Beckett’s critique of it. Similar to Kavanagh’s, Clarke’s poetry is found to be in thrall to that which it purportedly attacks — in this case, a form of conservative nationalism. A further discussion examines how such figurative similarities between the two poets create sharp differentiations in terms of style and political tenor.Less
This chapter compares and contrasts Patrick Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger with Austin Clarke’s Night and Morning. It explores the manner in which Kavanagh vandalizes stereotypes of rural Ireland and pastoral poetry, and focuses on central paradoxes of the poem. It argues that The Great Hunger is a savage indictment of a certain form of Romanticism, but is also deeply in thrall to it. It then moves to consider the poem as a highly sophisticated play upon multiple perspectives and tropes, arguing that this ironic sophistication constitutes the crux of its significance. The chapter then discusses the early ‘Irish mode’ of Austin Clarke, and examines Samuel Beckett’s critique of it. Similar to Kavanagh’s, Clarke’s poetry is found to be in thrall to that which it purportedly attacks — in this case, a form of conservative nationalism. A further discussion examines how such figurative similarities between the two poets create sharp differentiations in terms of style and political tenor.
Emily Greenwood
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199575244
- eISBN:
- 9780191722189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199575244.003.0004
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter proposes that one of the ways in which Caribbean Classics has been liberated from the colonial curriculum is through the rejection of the idea of a continuous transmission of empire from ...
More
This chapter proposes that one of the ways in which Caribbean Classics has been liberated from the colonial curriculum is through the rejection of the idea of a continuous transmission of empire from Rome's empire to the British Empire. Starting with Austin Clarke's The Polished Hoe (2002), the chapter traces variations on this theme in V. S. Naipaul (The Mimic Men (1967), and A Bend in the River (1979) ), and the poetry of Derek Walcott. These writers each play with the misquotation and mistranslation of Latin in modern Caribbean literature in order to expose gaps and elisions in British colonial appropriations of Classics. It transpires that the misquotation of Latin in these texts is not a simple matter. Particularly in Clarke and Naipaul, misquotation shows up a miscarriage in the process of translation and, correspondingly, a miscarriage in the succession of empire. If the classical texts quoted in colonial contexts mean something else, or are misquoted, then the narrative of imperial continuity (the translatio studii et imperii) loses cogency.Less
This chapter proposes that one of the ways in which Caribbean Classics has been liberated from the colonial curriculum is through the rejection of the idea of a continuous transmission of empire from Rome's empire to the British Empire. Starting with Austin Clarke's The Polished Hoe (2002), the chapter traces variations on this theme in V. S. Naipaul (The Mimic Men (1967), and A Bend in the River (1979) ), and the poetry of Derek Walcott. These writers each play with the misquotation and mistranslation of Latin in modern Caribbean literature in order to expose gaps and elisions in British colonial appropriations of Classics. It transpires that the misquotation of Latin in these texts is not a simple matter. Particularly in Clarke and Naipaul, misquotation shows up a miscarriage in the process of translation and, correspondingly, a miscarriage in the succession of empire. If the classical texts quoted in colonial contexts mean something else, or are misquoted, then the narrative of imperial continuity (the translatio studii et imperii) loses cogency.
Michael A. Bucknor
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781628464757
- eISBN:
- 9781628464801
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628464757.003.0013
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter turns to Canada – long an important migration destination from the Caribbean–as an overlooked site of postwar literary production. Employing the example of the Barbadian-born Austin ...
More
This chapter turns to Canada – long an important migration destination from the Caribbean–as an overlooked site of postwar literary production. Employing the example of the Barbadian-born Austin Clarke, an author firmly canonized and even celebrated in Canada, it explores the generative links Clarke’s own career exemplifies between the Caribbean, Canada, the United States, and Britain–a multifaceted transnationalism in conversation with his Windrush peers but equally influenced by the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. and racial politics in Canada. Employing theories of the Black Atlantic and diaspora, the chapter holds Clarke up as an exemplar of literary and political processes that resist containment within an anti-colonial national frame by gesturing outwards, toward a differentially rooted (and routed), insistently global politics of blackness.Less
This chapter turns to Canada – long an important migration destination from the Caribbean–as an overlooked site of postwar literary production. Employing the example of the Barbadian-born Austin Clarke, an author firmly canonized and even celebrated in Canada, it explores the generative links Clarke’s own career exemplifies between the Caribbean, Canada, the United States, and Britain–a multifaceted transnationalism in conversation with his Windrush peers but equally influenced by the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. and racial politics in Canada. Employing theories of the Black Atlantic and diaspora, the chapter holds Clarke up as an exemplar of literary and political processes that resist containment within an anti-colonial national frame by gesturing outwards, toward a differentially rooted (and routed), insistently global politics of blackness.
Niall Carson
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719099373
- eISBN:
- 9781526109743
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719099373.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter looks at the group of authors and artists that contributed to and worked for The Bell. It exposes the relationships between O’Faoláin and O’Donnell to Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and ...
More
This chapter looks at the group of authors and artists that contributed to and worked for The Bell. It exposes the relationships between O’Faoláin and O’Donnell to Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Austin Clarke. It also accounts for the bizarre ménage that existed between the Poetry Editor of The Bell, his wife, the painter Nora McGuinness and the established author Robert Graves and his mistress, the poet, Laura Riding. This scandal rocked literary England and had reverberations in Ireland and for The Bell. This chapter also discusses censorship in Ireland and places it in its proper international context; it does so by addressing O’Faoláin’s attitude to censorship and by complicating the traditional picture of him as a leading voice of secular liberalism against and oppressive state censorship.Less
This chapter looks at the group of authors and artists that contributed to and worked for The Bell. It exposes the relationships between O’Faoláin and O’Donnell to Flann O’Brien, Patrick Kavanagh and Austin Clarke. It also accounts for the bizarre ménage that existed between the Poetry Editor of The Bell, his wife, the painter Nora McGuinness and the established author Robert Graves and his mistress, the poet, Laura Riding. This scandal rocked literary England and had reverberations in Ireland and for The Bell. This chapter also discusses censorship in Ireland and places it in its proper international context; it does so by addressing O’Faoláin’s attitude to censorship and by complicating the traditional picture of him as a leading voice of secular liberalism against and oppressive state censorship.
Graham Huggan
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781781382967
- eISBN:
- 9781781384084
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382967.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter refers to the archived correspondence between Austin Clarke and Sam Selvon in order to consider how the private and public relationships maintained by writers of the Caribbean diaspora ...
More
This chapter refers to the archived correspondence between Austin Clarke and Sam Selvon in order to consider how the private and public relationships maintained by writers of the Caribbean diaspora complicate the paradigms that typically organize the production and reception of their work. Using a Bourdieusian methodology that takes into account the power relations within which archived documents operate, this chapter reads these letters as offering insight into the habitus of Clarke and Selvon as well as the different types of capital available to them. These authors strategically respond to factors like the mediating role of institutional or state sponsorship in defining themselves and their writing within the field of cultural production. The social, commercial, and epistemological relationships traced suggest the need to be wary of arranging Caribbean immigrant writers’ subjectivities in ways that ignore the complexities of their transnational positioning.Less
This chapter refers to the archived correspondence between Austin Clarke and Sam Selvon in order to consider how the private and public relationships maintained by writers of the Caribbean diaspora complicate the paradigms that typically organize the production and reception of their work. Using a Bourdieusian methodology that takes into account the power relations within which archived documents operate, this chapter reads these letters as offering insight into the habitus of Clarke and Selvon as well as the different types of capital available to them. These authors strategically respond to factors like the mediating role of institutional or state sponsorship in defining themselves and their writing within the field of cultural production. The social, commercial, and epistemological relationships traced suggest the need to be wary of arranging Caribbean immigrant writers’ subjectivities in ways that ignore the complexities of their transnational positioning.
Emily Greenwood
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199575244
- eISBN:
- 9780191722189
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199575244.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Afro‐Greeks explores dialogues between anglophone Caribbean literature and the complex legacies of ancient Greece and Rome, from the 1920s to the beginning of the twenty‐first century. ...
More
Afro‐Greeks explores dialogues between anglophone Caribbean literature and the complex legacies of ancient Greece and Rome, from the 1920s to the beginning of the twenty‐first century. Classics still bears the negative associations of the colonial educational curriculum that was thrust upon the British West Indies with the Victorian triad of the three Cs (Cricket, Classics, and Christianity). In a study that embraces Kamau Brathwaite, Austin Clarke, John Figueroa, C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, and Eric Williams, the author traces a distinctive regional tradition of engaging with Classics in the English‐speaking Caribbean. She argues that, following on from C. L. R. James's revisionist approach to the history of ancient Greece, there has been a practice of reading the Classics for oneself in anglophone Caribbean literature, a practice that has contributed to the larger project of the articulation of the Caribbean self. The writers examined offered a strenuous critique of an exclusive, Western conception of Graeco‐Roman antiquity, often conducting this critique through literary subterfuge, playing on the colonial prejudice that Classics did not belong to them. Afro‐Greeks examines both the terms of this critique, and the way in which these writers have made Classics theirs.Less
Afro‐Greeks explores dialogues between anglophone Caribbean literature and the complex legacies of ancient Greece and Rome, from the 1920s to the beginning of the twenty‐first century. Classics still bears the negative associations of the colonial educational curriculum that was thrust upon the British West Indies with the Victorian triad of the three Cs (Cricket, Classics, and Christianity). In a study that embraces Kamau Brathwaite, Austin Clarke, John Figueroa, C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, and Eric Williams, the author traces a distinctive regional tradition of engaging with Classics in the English‐speaking Caribbean. She argues that, following on from C. L. R. James's revisionist approach to the history of ancient Greece, there has been a practice of reading the Classics for oneself in anglophone Caribbean literature, a practice that has contributed to the larger project of the articulation of the Caribbean self. The writers examined offered a strenuous critique of an exclusive, Western conception of Graeco‐Roman antiquity, often conducting this critique through literary subterfuge, playing on the colonial prejudice that Classics did not belong to them. Afro‐Greeks examines both the terms of this critique, and the way in which these writers have made Classics theirs.
W. J. McCormack
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198739821
- eISBN:
- 9780191802799
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198739821.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Hewitt’s interest in regionalism as a possible solution to Ulster’s internal and external problems is explored. The influence of Estyn Evans, Patrick Geddes, and Lewis Mumford is assessed. Varieties ...
More
Hewitt’s interest in regionalism as a possible solution to Ulster’s internal and external problems is explored. The influence of Estyn Evans, Patrick Geddes, and Lewis Mumford is assessed. Varieties of religious curiosity brought the poet and his wife occasionally to Catholic Mass in Cushendall and to Unitarian services in Belfast. Scottish influences (notably Hugh MacDiarmid) also affect him. Roberta Hewitt’s capabilities and her unsteady self-confidence are examined in some detail. Hewitt attended the re-interment of W. B. Yeats in Sligo, where he once again met Austin Clarke. Back in Belfast, the attentions of a young woman flatter him, and exasperate Roberta. Through Chapter 5, the ardours and pleasures of weekend rural living intertwine with the development of regionalist ideas and numerous poems.Less
Hewitt’s interest in regionalism as a possible solution to Ulster’s internal and external problems is explored. The influence of Estyn Evans, Patrick Geddes, and Lewis Mumford is assessed. Varieties of religious curiosity brought the poet and his wife occasionally to Catholic Mass in Cushendall and to Unitarian services in Belfast. Scottish influences (notably Hugh MacDiarmid) also affect him. Roberta Hewitt’s capabilities and her unsteady self-confidence are examined in some detail. Hewitt attended the re-interment of W. B. Yeats in Sligo, where he once again met Austin Clarke. Back in Belfast, the attentions of a young woman flatter him, and exasperate Roberta. Through Chapter 5, the ardours and pleasures of weekend rural living intertwine with the development of regionalist ideas and numerous poems.
