Bonnie Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496810557
- eISBN:
- 9781496810595
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496810557.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past explores the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they impact upon individual lives. Through ...
More
Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past explores the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they impact upon individual lives. Through their historically-informed self-writings, the five Caribbean authors that have been selected for this study–Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière–offer compelling insights into confronting, coming to terms with and reconciling with their past, both collective and individual. A central question is the conceptual link between singular and plural, between personal and collective notions of history and the connections that exist between them. The employment of ‘personal narratives’ as the vehicle to carry out this investigation encompasses the tension that is evident in the writers’ reflections, which constantly move between the collective and the personal and is embodied in the idea of ‘their past’–a complex, rhizomatic network that extends beyond the notion of a single, private life. The contrasting yet complementary nature of the book’s title–connecting histories and the personal past-underlines the existence of a shared past of which the five writers are deeply conscious, but also their own past, which overlaps with these historical inheritances. The book’s central focus, then, is trifold: it concerns a collective, and to some extent documented and shared, historical past; a more variable, unique, personal past revealed in the ‘personal narratives’ of the five authors as well as on the connections between these two pasts.Less
Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past explores the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they impact upon individual lives. Through their historically-informed self-writings, the five Caribbean authors that have been selected for this study–Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière–offer compelling insights into confronting, coming to terms with and reconciling with their past, both collective and individual. A central question is the conceptual link between singular and plural, between personal and collective notions of history and the connections that exist between them. The employment of ‘personal narratives’ as the vehicle to carry out this investigation encompasses the tension that is evident in the writers’ reflections, which constantly move between the collective and the personal and is embodied in the idea of ‘their past’–a complex, rhizomatic network that extends beyond the notion of a single, private life. The contrasting yet complementary nature of the book’s title–connecting histories and the personal past-underlines the existence of a shared past of which the five writers are deeply conscious, but also their own past, which overlaps with these historical inheritances. The book’s central focus, then, is trifold: it concerns a collective, and to some extent documented and shared, historical past; a more variable, unique, personal past revealed in the ‘personal narratives’ of the five authors as well as on the connections between these two pasts.
Matthew C. Augustine
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526100764
- eISBN:
- 9781526138651
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526100764.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Many scholars of Milton’s early verse have discerned in The Poems of Mr John Milton (1645) a prophecy of the English revolution and of the unsung poet’s transformation into the bard of Paradise Lost. ...
More
Many scholars of Milton’s early verse have discerned in The Poems of Mr John Milton (1645) a prophecy of the English revolution and of the unsung poet’s transformation into the bard of Paradise Lost. This chapter attempts to read the poetry of young Milton within the uncertain horizons of his own lived history. It thus focuses on the problematic of becoming at the heart of Poems 1645. For if notes of apocalyptic and rebirth sound throughout the volume, this chapter nonetheless shows how the staging and re-staging of this theme ultimately folds hoped-for millenarian rupture back into the fabric of secular time. What is argued of the Nativity Ode has general application to Milton’s inaugural collection of verse: despite all that it would confirm about Milton’s genius, the shape of his career, and the direction of English history, the most that it can do is resolve upon an indeterminate waiting.Less
Many scholars of Milton’s early verse have discerned in The Poems of Mr John Milton (1645) a prophecy of the English revolution and of the unsung poet’s transformation into the bard of Paradise Lost. This chapter attempts to read the poetry of young Milton within the uncertain horizons of his own lived history. It thus focuses on the problematic of becoming at the heart of Poems 1645. For if notes of apocalyptic and rebirth sound throughout the volume, this chapter nonetheless shows how the staging and re-staging of this theme ultimately folds hoped-for millenarian rupture back into the fabric of secular time. What is argued of the Nativity Ode has general application to Milton’s inaugural collection of verse: despite all that it would confirm about Milton’s genius, the shape of his career, and the direction of English history, the most that it can do is resolve upon an indeterminate waiting.
