Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. ...
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Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.Less
Transatlantic Modernism and the Emergence of Postcolonial Literature is a study of midcentury literary institutions integral to the formation of both modernism and postcolonial writing. Several organizations central to interwar modernism, such as the BBC, influential publishers, and university English departments, became important sites in the emergence of postcolonial literature after the war. How did some of modernism's leading figures of the 1930s, such as T.S. Eliot, Louis MacNeice, and Stephen Spender, come to admire late colonial and early postcolonial literature in the 1950s? Similarly, why did late colonial and early postcolonial writers--including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Claude McKay, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o--actively seek alliances with metropolitan intellectuals? Peter Kalliney's original archival work on modernist cultural institutions demonstrates that this disparate group of intellectuals had strong professional incentives to treat one another more as fellow literary professionals, and less as political or cultural antagonists. Surprisingly, metropolitan intellectuals and their late colonial counterparts leaned heavily on modernist theories of aesthetic autonomy to facilitate their collaborative ventures. For white, metropolitan writers, TS Eliot's notion of impersonality could help to recruit new audiences and conspirators from colonized regions of the world. For black, colonial writers, aesthetic autonomy could be used to imagine a literary sphere uniquely resistant to the forms of racial prejudice endemic to the colonial system. This strategic collaboration did not last forever, but it left a lasting imprint on the ultimate disposition of modernism and the evolution of postcolonial literature.
Jason Herbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940391
- eISBN:
- 9781786944948
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940391.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Construction of identity has constituted a vigorous source of debate in the Caribbean from the early days of colonization to the present, and under the varying guises of independence, ...
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Construction of identity has constituted a vigorous source of debate in the Caribbean from the early days of colonization to the present, and under the varying guises of independence, departmentalization, dictatorship, overseas collectivity and occupation. Given the strictures and structures of colonialism long imposed upon the colonized subject, the (re)makings of identity have proven anything but evident when it comes to determining authentic expressions and perceptions of the postcolonial self. By way of close readings of both constructions in literature and the construction of literature, Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean proposes an original, informative frame of reference for understanding the long and ever-evolving struggle for social, cultural, historical and political autonomy in the region. Taking as its point of focus diverse canonical and lesser-known texts from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti published between 1958 and 2013, this book examines the trope of the house (architecture) and the meta-textual construction of texts (architexture) as a means of conceptualizing and articulating how authentic means of expression are and have been created in French-Caribbean literature over the greater part of the past half-century—whether it be in the context of the years leading up to or following the departmentalization of France’s overseas colonies in the 1940’s, the wrath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, or the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010.Less
Construction of identity has constituted a vigorous source of debate in the Caribbean from the early days of colonization to the present, and under the varying guises of independence, departmentalization, dictatorship, overseas collectivity and occupation. Given the strictures and structures of colonialism long imposed upon the colonized subject, the (re)makings of identity have proven anything but evident when it comes to determining authentic expressions and perceptions of the postcolonial self. By way of close readings of both constructions in literature and the construction of literature, Architextual Authenticity: Constructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean proposes an original, informative frame of reference for understanding the long and ever-evolving struggle for social, cultural, historical and political autonomy in the region. Taking as its point of focus diverse canonical and lesser-known texts from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Haiti published between 1958 and 2013, this book examines the trope of the house (architecture) and the meta-textual construction of texts (architexture) as a means of conceptualizing and articulating how authentic means of expression are and have been created in French-Caribbean literature over the greater part of the past half-century—whether it be in the context of the years leading up to or following the departmentalization of France’s overseas colonies in the 1940’s, the wrath of Hurricane Hugo in 1989, or the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010.
Laurie R. Lambert
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280063
- eISBN:
- 9780823281510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280063.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
This chapter analyzes Dionne Brand’s poetry collection, Chronicles of the Hostile Sun (1984), and her novel In Another Place, Not Here (1996). While Chronicles pinpoints the misrepresentation of the ...
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This chapter analyzes Dionne Brand’s poetry collection, Chronicles of the Hostile Sun (1984), and her novel In Another Place, Not Here (1996). While Chronicles pinpoints the misrepresentation of the Grenada Revolution in anti-revolutionary narratives emanating from American imperialism, In Another Place highlights how structures of healing and alternative epistemologies of black radicalism are developed between queer women who are on the margins of both the postcolonial Caribbean nation and the revolution intended to subvert American imperialist forces. Brand’s writing interrogates the black radical tradition in search of a radical feminist politics that can account for gender and sexuality alongside race and class.Less
This chapter analyzes Dionne Brand’s poetry collection, Chronicles of the Hostile Sun (1984), and her novel In Another Place, Not Here (1996). While Chronicles pinpoints the misrepresentation of the Grenada Revolution in anti-revolutionary narratives emanating from American imperialism, In Another Place highlights how structures of healing and alternative epistemologies of black radicalism are developed between queer women who are on the margins of both the postcolonial Caribbean nation and the revolution intended to subvert American imperialist forces. Brand’s writing interrogates the black radical tradition in search of a radical feminist politics that can account for gender and sexuality alongside race and class.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Three examines the influence of FR Leavis, architect of the Great Tradition, on the thinking of Kamau Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, two of the leading theorists of postcolonial ...
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Chapter Three examines the influence of FR Leavis, architect of the Great Tradition, on the thinking of Kamau Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, two of the leading theorists of postcolonial literature. The chapter argues that Leavis's emphasis on a "living language," as he called it - that is, his belief that a robust spoken dialect is the basis of any great literary tradition - would be rearticulated by Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ in their calls for vernacular literature. The chapter goes on to discuss the close but fractious connections between the English department and postcolonial literature, arguing that Leavis's complex professional relationship with the discipline was one of his major bequests to postcolonial studies.Less
Chapter Three examines the influence of FR Leavis, architect of the Great Tradition, on the thinking of Kamau Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, two of the leading theorists of postcolonial literature. The chapter argues that Leavis's emphasis on a "living language," as he called it - that is, his belief that a robust spoken dialect is the basis of any great literary tradition - would be rearticulated by Brathwaite and Ngũgĩ in their calls for vernacular literature. The chapter goes on to discuss the close but fractious connections between the English department and postcolonial literature, arguing that Leavis's complex professional relationship with the discipline was one of his major bequests to postcolonial studies.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Four examines the BBC's role as a major patron of Caribbean writing in the 1950s and 60s through Caribbean Voices, a weekly literary program. Using extensive archival sources, this chapter ...
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Chapter Four examines the BBC's role as a major patron of Caribbean writing in the 1950s and 60s through Caribbean Voices, a weekly literary program. Using extensive archival sources, this chapter argues that the BBC served both imperialist and anti-imperialist agendas at the same time. Although the BBC, through its overseas programming, was designed to maintain a cultural empire of English speakers, Caribbean writers used the organization for their own purposes, allowing them to subtly criticize metropolitan dominance. Additionally, important "Windrush" writers such as George Lamming, VS Naipaul, and Sam Selvon parlayed their experience at the BBC into concrete professional opportunities in London.Less
Chapter Four examines the BBC's role as a major patron of Caribbean writing in the 1950s and 60s through Caribbean Voices, a weekly literary program. Using extensive archival sources, this chapter argues that the BBC served both imperialist and anti-imperialist agendas at the same time. Although the BBC, through its overseas programming, was designed to maintain a cultural empire of English speakers, Caribbean writers used the organization for their own purposes, allowing them to subtly criticize metropolitan dominance. Additionally, important "Windrush" writers such as George Lamming, VS Naipaul, and Sam Selvon parlayed their experience at the BBC into concrete professional opportunities in London.
Jason Herbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940391
- eISBN:
- 9781786944948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940391.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
As a means of situating the correlative concepts of authenticity and identity within the historical context of the region, the Introduction discusses the frustrated notion of origins in the French ...
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As a means of situating the correlative concepts of authenticity and identity within the historical context of the region, the Introduction discusses the frustrated notion of origins in the French Caribbean and the inherent obstacles faced in negotiating a murky, ambivalent, (pre)colonial past. After an initial assessment and discussion of what the authors of Éloge de la Créolité describe as the “domination of an elsewhere”—the external forces to which the colonized is subject as a direct result of the colonial project—critical attention is devoted to the different means of identity-building that have been proposed by French-Caribbean authors and critics. In subsequently asserting that “reading structure” in the region’s vibrant literature corpus illustrates well how endeavors of authenticity in the French Caribbean might be both conceived and realized in literary terms, the chapter concludes by clarifying the dual methodological approach (architectural and architextual) that constitutes the framework of analysis for this book.Less
As a means of situating the correlative concepts of authenticity and identity within the historical context of the region, the Introduction discusses the frustrated notion of origins in the French Caribbean and the inherent obstacles faced in negotiating a murky, ambivalent, (pre)colonial past. After an initial assessment and discussion of what the authors of Éloge de la Créolité describe as the “domination of an elsewhere”—the external forces to which the colonized is subject as a direct result of the colonial project—critical attention is devoted to the different means of identity-building that have been proposed by French-Caribbean authors and critics. In subsequently asserting that “reading structure” in the region’s vibrant literature corpus illustrates well how endeavors of authenticity in the French Caribbean might be both conceived and realized in literary terms, the chapter concludes by clarifying the dual methodological approach (architectural and architextual) that constitutes the framework of analysis for this book.
Celia Britton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781846311376
- eISBN:
- 9781786945303
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846311376.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction seeks to better understand the concept of community as a central and problematic issue in French Caribbean literature. The study examines ...
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The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction seeks to better understand the concept of community as a central and problematic issue in French Caribbean literature. The study examines representations of community in seven French Caribbean novels, including Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée, Edouard Glissant’s Le Quatrième Siècle, Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, Vincent Placoly’s L’Eau-de-mort guildive, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, Daniel Maximin’s L’Ile et une nuit, and Maryse Condé’s Desirada. Each novel is discussed in chronological order, demonstrating a progressive move away from the ‘closed’ community towards a newer sense of an ‘open’ community. In this study, Britton offers an understanding of the postcolonial societies of the Caribbean by looking at French Caribbean literature’s role in the creation of community. The seven novels analysed reveal a correlation between a tightly knit, purposeful community and a linear narrative that ends in definitive resolution, and, conversely, between a dispersed or heterogeneous community and a narrative structure that avoids linearity and closure.Less
The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction seeks to better understand the concept of community as a central and problematic issue in French Caribbean literature. The study examines representations of community in seven French Caribbean novels, including Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée, Edouard Glissant’s Le Quatrième Siècle, Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, Vincent Placoly’s L’Eau-de-mort guildive, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, Daniel Maximin’s L’Ile et une nuit, and Maryse Condé’s Desirada. Each novel is discussed in chronological order, demonstrating a progressive move away from the ‘closed’ community towards a newer sense of an ‘open’ community. In this study, Britton offers an understanding of the postcolonial societies of the Caribbean by looking at French Caribbean literature’s role in the creation of community. The seven novels analysed reveal a correlation between a tightly knit, purposeful community and a linear narrative that ends in definitive resolution, and, conversely, between a dispersed or heterogeneous community and a narrative structure that avoids linearity and closure.
Jason Herbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940391
- eISBN:
- 9781786944948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940391.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
As a means of illustrating the central albeit conflicted place that issues of authenticity occupy in the French Caribbean, Chapter 3 examines Guadeloupean Maryse Condé’s canonical novel, Traversée de ...
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As a means of illustrating the central albeit conflicted place that issues of authenticity occupy in the French Caribbean, Chapter 3 examines Guadeloupean Maryse Condé’s canonical novel, Traversée de la Mangrove (1989). Consideration of the somewhat heated discussion of Caribbean authenticity prompted by Patrick Chamoiseau’s public reading of Condé’s novel, in evidencing the authors’ stark differences of opinion on the matter, also serves to further inform the fundamentally identitarian dilemmas surrounding the construction of French-Caribbean expression. Subsequent close textual analysis of Traversée de la Mangrove on two distinct architextual and architectural levels illustrates how issues of authenticity are divulged and addressed in the text. Additional consideration of the novel’s architextual properties—in particular with respect to Haitian Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la Rosée (1944)—leads, in conclusion, to an examination of the architectural significance of the house that Condé’s main character inhabits and in which he undertakes the (metatextual) project of writing a novel entitled Traversée de la Mangrove.Less
As a means of illustrating the central albeit conflicted place that issues of authenticity occupy in the French Caribbean, Chapter 3 examines Guadeloupean Maryse Condé’s canonical novel, Traversée de la Mangrove (1989). Consideration of the somewhat heated discussion of Caribbean authenticity prompted by Patrick Chamoiseau’s public reading of Condé’s novel, in evidencing the authors’ stark differences of opinion on the matter, also serves to further inform the fundamentally identitarian dilemmas surrounding the construction of French-Caribbean expression. Subsequent close textual analysis of Traversée de la Mangrove on two distinct architextual and architectural levels illustrates how issues of authenticity are divulged and addressed in the text. Additional consideration of the novel’s architextual properties—in particular with respect to Haitian Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la Rosée (1944)—leads, in conclusion, to an examination of the architectural significance of the house that Condé’s main character inhabits and in which he undertakes the (metatextual) project of writing a novel entitled Traversée de la Mangrove.
Ian Whittington
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474413596
- eISBN:
- 9781474444897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413596.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
As a colonial subject and woman of colour, Una Marson occupies a unique place in the history of wartime broadcasting in Britain. Her weekly programCalling the West Indies began as a “message home” ...
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As a colonial subject and woman of colour, Una Marson occupies a unique place in the history of wartime broadcasting in Britain. Her weekly programCalling the West Indies began as a “message home” program for Caribbean soldiers stationed in the UK but grew, as the war progressed, into a literary and cultural forum for writers from across the Black Atlantic. Though barred from advocating openly for independence, Marson used her program to promote West Indian cultural autonomy by spotlighting emerging Caribbean literary figures and forging connections with activists and intellectuals from the U.S., Britain, Africa, and elsewhere. Beyond building such transatlantic networks, Calling the West Indies afforded listeners in the Caribbean the first opportunities to hear literature spoken in the West Indian forms of English which Edward Kamau Brathwaite would go on to call “nation language.” By focusing on Marson’s wartime work, this chapter rectifies a persistent tendency, in histories of Caribbean literature and broadcasting, to omit not only the central role played by this progressive feminist intellectual, but also the role of the war itself as catalyst to the postwar literary renaissance in the West Indies.Less
As a colonial subject and woman of colour, Una Marson occupies a unique place in the history of wartime broadcasting in Britain. Her weekly programCalling the West Indies began as a “message home” program for Caribbean soldiers stationed in the UK but grew, as the war progressed, into a literary and cultural forum for writers from across the Black Atlantic. Though barred from advocating openly for independence, Marson used her program to promote West Indian cultural autonomy by spotlighting emerging Caribbean literary figures and forging connections with activists and intellectuals from the U.S., Britain, Africa, and elsewhere. Beyond building such transatlantic networks, Calling the West Indies afforded listeners in the Caribbean the first opportunities to hear literature spoken in the West Indian forms of English which Edward Kamau Brathwaite would go on to call “nation language.” By focusing on Marson’s wartime work, this chapter rectifies a persistent tendency, in histories of Caribbean literature and broadcasting, to omit not only the central role played by this progressive feminist intellectual, but also the role of the war itself as catalyst to the postwar literary renaissance in the West Indies.
Peter J. Kalliney
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199977970
- eISBN:
- 9780199346189
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199977970.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, ...
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Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, however, she disappeared, staging an improbable comeback in the 1960s, culminating in the release of Wide Sargasso Sea and the republication of her earlier fiction. In those intervening years, however, a number of high-profile Caribbean writers had come to the attention of metropolitan critics and audiences. This chapter situates Rhys's changing depictions of racial difference in this long context, exploring the subtle continuities and equally subtle differences between her interwar fiction and her postcolonial writing.Less
Chapter Seven examines the evolution of Jean Rhys's long and unusual career. In the 1920s and 30s, Rhys was a typical member of the expatriate artist community of the Left Bank. In the 1940s and 50s, however, she disappeared, staging an improbable comeback in the 1960s, culminating in the release of Wide Sargasso Sea and the republication of her earlier fiction. In those intervening years, however, a number of high-profile Caribbean writers had come to the attention of metropolitan critics and audiences. This chapter situates Rhys's changing depictions of racial difference in this long context, exploring the subtle continuities and equally subtle differences between her interwar fiction and her postcolonial writing.
Jason Herbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940391
- eISBN:
- 9781786944948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940391.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Chapter 4 considers issues of identity in the context of hurricane Hugo’s gale force winds and rain battering a house and its solitary inhabitant in Guadeloupe, as recounted in the third and final ...
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Chapter 4 considers issues of identity in the context of hurricane Hugo’s gale force winds and rain battering a house and its solitary inhabitant in Guadeloupe, as recounted in the third and final novel of Daniel Maximin’s Caribbean trilogy, L’Île et une nuits (1995). The chapter focuses initially on both implicit and explicit architextual elements of the novel, including Les Mille et une nuits and Traversée de la Mangrove, as well as the contractual assumptions involved in so far as the novel’s role as the trilogy’s final installment. Subsequently, it is argued that the necessarily conditional resistance to external forces exhibited over the course of the storm by the protagonist’s house, Les Flamboyants, can be interpreted as a Caribbean architectural archetype akin to identity-building in the region. This dual architextual-architectural reading leads, in conclusion, to reflections on the outcomes of insularity and the assertion that Les Flamboyants’s survival, destruction and potential reconstruction reveal, on a larger scale, the complex and ongoing negotiations of identity at stake in the French Caribbean.
Less
Chapter 4 considers issues of identity in the context of hurricane Hugo’s gale force winds and rain battering a house and its solitary inhabitant in Guadeloupe, as recounted in the third and final novel of Daniel Maximin’s Caribbean trilogy, L’Île et une nuits (1995). The chapter focuses initially on both implicit and explicit architextual elements of the novel, including Les Mille et une nuits and Traversée de la Mangrove, as well as the contractual assumptions involved in so far as the novel’s role as the trilogy’s final installment. Subsequently, it is argued that the necessarily conditional resistance to external forces exhibited over the course of the storm by the protagonist’s house, Les Flamboyants, can be interpreted as a Caribbean architectural archetype akin to identity-building in the region. This dual architextual-architectural reading leads, in conclusion, to reflections on the outcomes of insularity and the assertion that Les Flamboyants’s survival, destruction and potential reconstruction reveal, on a larger scale, the complex and ongoing negotiations of identity at stake in the French Caribbean.
Jason Herbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940391
- eISBN:
- 9781786944948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940391.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
By way of a brief summary of Ulysses’ return from Troy to Ithaca in Homer’s The Odyssey, the Conclusion begins by juxtaposing the fundamentally different notions of the house as found in traditional ...
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By way of a brief summary of Ulysses’ return from Troy to Ithaca in Homer’s The Odyssey, the Conclusion begins by juxtaposing the fundamentally different notions of the house as found in traditional epic narratives—the mythes fondateurs of which Édouard Glissant is so wary—and the literatures of the French Caribbean. The static, unchanging nature of Ulysses’ home, as well as the tree whose literal roots remain part of its construction, are what allow him to reclaim his identity and be duly recognized. Whereas the Caribbean house plays a no less integral role in the negotiation and construction of identity, the architectural and architextual analyses of previous chapters are revisited as a means of illustrating that such identity-building is, in the French Caribbean, a necessarily long and arduous process. In conclusion, the dual methodological lenses of architecture and architexture are demonstrated to be informative critical tools with which to gauge the dynamic notion of constructing identity—a near-cyclical processes of destruction and/or reassessment followed by subsequent (re)construction that, while by nature not absolute, is no less defining of a people’s perceptions and expressions of place and self.Less
By way of a brief summary of Ulysses’ return from Troy to Ithaca in Homer’s The Odyssey, the Conclusion begins by juxtaposing the fundamentally different notions of the house as found in traditional epic narratives—the mythes fondateurs of which Édouard Glissant is so wary—and the literatures of the French Caribbean. The static, unchanging nature of Ulysses’ home, as well as the tree whose literal roots remain part of its construction, are what allow him to reclaim his identity and be duly recognized. Whereas the Caribbean house plays a no less integral role in the negotiation and construction of identity, the architectural and architextual analyses of previous chapters are revisited as a means of illustrating that such identity-building is, in the French Caribbean, a necessarily long and arduous process. In conclusion, the dual methodological lenses of architecture and architexture are demonstrated to be informative critical tools with which to gauge the dynamic notion of constructing identity—a near-cyclical processes of destruction and/or reassessment followed by subsequent (re)construction that, while by nature not absolute, is no less defining of a people’s perceptions and expressions of place and self.
Celia Britton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781846311376
- eISBN:
- 9781786945303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846311376.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter focuses mainly on Daniel Maximin’s L’Ile et une nuit but also makes reference to the author’s other two novels, L’Isolé soleil and Soufrières. Britton foregrounds how, in L’Ile et une ...
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This chapter focuses mainly on Daniel Maximin’s L’Ile et une nuit but also makes reference to the author’s other two novels, L’Isolé soleil and Soufrières. Britton foregrounds how, in L’Ile et une nuit, the community of Guadeloupe is defined in relation to the forces of nature, and also by its capacity to resist them.Less
This chapter focuses mainly on Daniel Maximin’s L’Ile et une nuit but also makes reference to the author’s other two novels, L’Isolé soleil and Soufrières. Britton foregrounds how, in L’Ile et une nuit, the community of Guadeloupe is defined in relation to the forces of nature, and also by its capacity to resist them.
Nick Nesbitt
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318665
- eISBN:
- 9781846317934
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318665.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Caribbean Critique seeks to define and analyze the distinctive contribution of francophone Caribbean thinkers to perimetric Critical Theory. The book argues that their singular project has been to ...
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Caribbean Critique seeks to define and analyze the distinctive contribution of francophone Caribbean thinkers to perimetric Critical Theory. The book argues that their singular project has been to forge a brand of critique that, while borrowing from North Atlantic predecessors such as Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Sartre, was from the start indelibly marked by the Middle Passage, slavery, and colonialism. Chapters and sections address figures such as Toussaint Louverture, Baron de Vastey, Victor Schoelcher, Aimé Césaire, René Ménil, Frantz Fanon, Maryse Condé, and Edouard Glissant, while an extensive theoretical introduction defines the essential parameters of ‘Caribbean Critique.’Less
Caribbean Critique seeks to define and analyze the distinctive contribution of francophone Caribbean thinkers to perimetric Critical Theory. The book argues that their singular project has been to forge a brand of critique that, while borrowing from North Atlantic predecessors such as Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, and Sartre, was from the start indelibly marked by the Middle Passage, slavery, and colonialism. Chapters and sections address figures such as Toussaint Louverture, Baron de Vastey, Victor Schoelcher, Aimé Césaire, René Ménil, Frantz Fanon, Maryse Condé, and Edouard Glissant, while an extensive theoretical introduction defines the essential parameters of ‘Caribbean Critique.’
Jason Herbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940391
- eISBN:
- 9781786944948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940391.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Whereas, on the heels of a devastating hurricane’s passing, the final pages of Maximin’s L’Île et une nuit (Chapter 4) hint at both architectural and architextual (re)building in the wake of ...
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Whereas, on the heels of a devastating hurricane’s passing, the final pages of Maximin’s L’Île et une nuit (Chapter 4) hint at both architectural and architextual (re)building in the wake of catastrophe, Chapter 5 examines two works by Haitian Yanick Lahens that directly address the task of (re)construction in the aftermath of large-scale destruction. The chapter begins with a discussion of so-called writings of disaster (Jenson) that have, from the early days of colonization to the present, cast Haiti in a negative, counter-productive light. To the contrary, as a creative counter-discourse to discourses of disaster, literary works from Haiti can be understood as literature of reconstruction. As a phenomenon that is by no means new to Haiti, literature of reconstruction is conceptualized not only as a blueprint or framework for reassessment and rebuilding in/of Haiti, but is demonstrated to constitute, in and of itself, an example of the very reconstruction of which it speaks. In this light, close readings of Lahens’s post-earthquake texts Failles (2010) and Guillaume et Nathalie (2013) illustrate the architextuality of Haitian literature and how, precisely, this vibrant body of works embodies both the path and potential for identity-building in the French Caribbean.Less
Whereas, on the heels of a devastating hurricane’s passing, the final pages of Maximin’s L’Île et une nuit (Chapter 4) hint at both architectural and architextual (re)building in the wake of catastrophe, Chapter 5 examines two works by Haitian Yanick Lahens that directly address the task of (re)construction in the aftermath of large-scale destruction. The chapter begins with a discussion of so-called writings of disaster (Jenson) that have, from the early days of colonization to the present, cast Haiti in a negative, counter-productive light. To the contrary, as a creative counter-discourse to discourses of disaster, literary works from Haiti can be understood as literature of reconstruction. As a phenomenon that is by no means new to Haiti, literature of reconstruction is conceptualized not only as a blueprint or framework for reassessment and rebuilding in/of Haiti, but is demonstrated to constitute, in and of itself, an example of the very reconstruction of which it speaks. In this light, close readings of Lahens’s post-earthquake texts Failles (2010) and Guillaume et Nathalie (2013) illustrate the architextuality of Haitian literature and how, precisely, this vibrant body of works embodies both the path and potential for identity-building in the French Caribbean.
Marlene L. Daut
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381847
- eISBN:
- 9781781382394
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381847.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was an event of monumental world-historical significance, and here, in the first systematic literary history of those events, Haiti's war of independence is ...
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The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was an event of monumental world-historical significance, and here, in the first systematic literary history of those events, Haiti's war of independence is examined through the eyes of its actual and imagined participants, observers, survivors, and cultural descendants. The 'transatlantic print culture' under discussion in this literary history reveals that enlightenment racial 'science' was the primary vehicle through which the Haitian Revolution was interpreted by nineteenth-century Haitians, Europeans, and U.S. Americans alike. Through its author's contention that the Haitian revolutionary wars were incessantly racialized by four constantly recurring tropes—the 'monstrous hybrid', the 'tropical temptress', the 'tragic mulatto/a', and the 'colored historian'—Tropics of Haiti shows the ways in which the nineteenth-century tendency to understand Haiti's revolution in primarily racial terms has affected present day demonizations of Haiti and Haitians. In the end, this new archive of Haitian revolutionary writing, much of which has until now remained unknown to the contemporary reading public, invites us to examine how nineteenth-century attempts to paint Haitian independence as the result of a racial revolution coincide with present-day desires to render insignificant and 'unthinkable' the second independent republic of the New World.Less
The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was an event of monumental world-historical significance, and here, in the first systematic literary history of those events, Haiti's war of independence is examined through the eyes of its actual and imagined participants, observers, survivors, and cultural descendants. The 'transatlantic print culture' under discussion in this literary history reveals that enlightenment racial 'science' was the primary vehicle through which the Haitian Revolution was interpreted by nineteenth-century Haitians, Europeans, and U.S. Americans alike. Through its author's contention that the Haitian revolutionary wars were incessantly racialized by four constantly recurring tropes—the 'monstrous hybrid', the 'tropical temptress', the 'tragic mulatto/a', and the 'colored historian'—Tropics of Haiti shows the ways in which the nineteenth-century tendency to understand Haiti's revolution in primarily racial terms has affected present day demonizations of Haiti and Haitians. In the end, this new archive of Haitian revolutionary writing, much of which has until now remained unknown to the contemporary reading public, invites us to examine how nineteenth-century attempts to paint Haitian independence as the result of a racial revolution coincide with present-day desires to render insignificant and 'unthinkable' the second independent republic of the New World.
Celia Britton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781846311376
- eISBN:
- 9781786945303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846311376.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter explores the central theme of community in a close reading of Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée. It foregrounds the novel’s embodiment of an ideal of organic community and ...
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This chapter explores the central theme of community in a close reading of Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée. It foregrounds the novel’s embodiment of an ideal of organic community and analyses the act of re-building and restoring communal unity. Britton also looks at the success of Gouverneurs de la rosée, labelling it as one of the founding texts of Caribbean literature, and foregrounds what this means in terms of its consequent influence and power.Less
This chapter explores the central theme of community in a close reading of Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée. It foregrounds the novel’s embodiment of an ideal of organic community and analyses the act of re-building and restoring communal unity. Britton also looks at the success of Gouverneurs de la rosée, labelling it as one of the founding texts of Caribbean literature, and foregrounds what this means in terms of its consequent influence and power.
Celia Britton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781846311376
- eISBN:
- 9781786945303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846311376.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter explores Le Quatrième Siècle’s reflections on the conceptions of community and individual, which are required by a struggle for political independence, Caribbean solidarity, and cultural ...
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This chapter explores Le Quatrième Siècle’s reflections on the conceptions of community and individual, which are required by a struggle for political independence, Caribbean solidarity, and cultural autonomy. Also discussed in this chapter is Edouard Glissant’s position as a philosopher, with a comment on the prominence of opacity in Glissant’s thinking. Like many of the other chapters in this study, Britton compares the work of Glissant to that of the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s.Less
This chapter explores Le Quatrième Siècle’s reflections on the conceptions of community and individual, which are required by a struggle for political independence, Caribbean solidarity, and cultural autonomy. Also discussed in this chapter is Edouard Glissant’s position as a philosopher, with a comment on the prominence of opacity in Glissant’s thinking. Like many of the other chapters in this study, Britton compares the work of Glissant to that of the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s.
Celia Britton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781846311376
- eISBN:
- 9781786945303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846311376.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter highlights Desirada’s opposition between the breakdown of the biological family unit and the contrastingly positive strength of relationships not based on biological kinship: friendship ...
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This chapter highlights Desirada’s opposition between the breakdown of the biological family unit and the contrastingly positive strength of relationships not based on biological kinship: friendship and surrogate parent-child relationships. The chapter also explores marginalized, heterogeneous communities, while foregrounding the representation of Guadeloupe and Martinique as ideal organic communities free from alienation and depersonalization.Less
This chapter highlights Desirada’s opposition between the breakdown of the biological family unit and the contrastingly positive strength of relationships not based on biological kinship: friendship and surrogate parent-child relationships. The chapter also explores marginalized, heterogeneous communities, while foregrounding the representation of Guadeloupe and Martinique as ideal organic communities free from alienation and depersonalization.
Celia Britton
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781846311376
- eISBN:
- 9781786945303
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846311376.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter provides a close reading of Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, and portrays the rural Antillean community’s inability to derive any emotional strength from the ...
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This chapter provides a close reading of Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, and portrays the rural Antillean community’s inability to derive any emotional strength from the past. The chapter discusses characters within the novels’ own changing ideas and attitude towards community, and explores the ways in which role models find their place.Less
This chapter provides a close reading of Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, and portrays the rural Antillean community’s inability to derive any emotional strength from the past. The chapter discusses characters within the novels’ own changing ideas and attitude towards community, and explores the ways in which role models find their place.