John Wharton Lowe
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469628882
- eISBN:
- 9781469628059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469628882.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter takes up the important role travel writing played in presentations of the circumCaribbean, both in standard accounts and in fictions that explore tropical regions. Two writers not ...
More
This chapter takes up the important role travel writing played in presentations of the circumCaribbean, both in standard accounts and in fictions that explore tropical regions. Two writers not usually considered Southern, Constance Fenimore Woolson and Lafcadio Hearn receive extended analysis and comparison. Woolson’s travel writings, it is revealed, fed her fictions, particularly her Florida short stories and novels, all of which delineate myriad links between the South and the Caribbean, especially in terms of her Latino, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean characters. Hearn, by contrast, began by writing extensively about New Orleans culture, which then became the filter for his subsequent investigation and fictionalization of the Caribbean. The key texts examined are Woolson’s collection set during Reconstruction, Rodman the Keeper, and her novel East Angels; and Hearn’s memoir, Two Years in the French West Indies and his novels Chita and Youma. The concept of the tropical sublime receives a full analysis here, as both writers employ it extensively. Issues of sexuality, landscape depiction, and multi-ethnic portraiture play a key role in the discussion.Less
This chapter takes up the important role travel writing played in presentations of the circumCaribbean, both in standard accounts and in fictions that explore tropical regions. Two writers not usually considered Southern, Constance Fenimore Woolson and Lafcadio Hearn receive extended analysis and comparison. Woolson’s travel writings, it is revealed, fed her fictions, particularly her Florida short stories and novels, all of which delineate myriad links between the South and the Caribbean, especially in terms of her Latino, Native American, and Afro-Caribbean characters. Hearn, by contrast, began by writing extensively about New Orleans culture, which then became the filter for his subsequent investigation and fictionalization of the Caribbean. The key texts examined are Woolson’s collection set during Reconstruction, Rodman the Keeper, and her novel East Angels; and Hearn’s memoir, Two Years in the French West Indies and his novels Chita and Youma. The concept of the tropical sublime receives a full analysis here, as both writers employ it extensively. Issues of sexuality, landscape depiction, and multi-ethnic portraiture play a key role in the discussion.
John Wharton Lowe
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469628882
- eISBN:
- 9781469628059
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469628882.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter rehearses the myriad ways in which the U.S. Mexican War brought about a new awareness of the Caribbean on the part of Southern combatants, who crossed its waters and experienced its ...
More
This chapter rehearses the myriad ways in which the U.S. Mexican War brought about a new awareness of the Caribbean on the part of Southern combatants, who crossed its waters and experienced its cultures, which seemed both strange and familiar. U.S. concepts of Mexico - many of them drawn from Prescott’s monumental The Conquest of Mexico - are examined, alongside a portrayal of the ways in which the doctrine of manifest destiny shaped and influenced both the conduct of the war and modes of describing it. Mention is made of many of the writers who wrote about the war, many of whom never went to Mexico. The chapter builds to a reading of two military memories by Raphael Semmes and Arthur Manigualt, and concludes with a presentation of Colonel William C. Falkner’s sensationist novel, The Spanish Heroine, which influenced the Colonel’s great-grandson, William Faulkner. The concept of the “tropical sublime” receives a full illustration here.Less
This chapter rehearses the myriad ways in which the U.S. Mexican War brought about a new awareness of the Caribbean on the part of Southern combatants, who crossed its waters and experienced its cultures, which seemed both strange and familiar. U.S. concepts of Mexico - many of them drawn from Prescott’s monumental The Conquest of Mexico - are examined, alongside a portrayal of the ways in which the doctrine of manifest destiny shaped and influenced both the conduct of the war and modes of describing it. Mention is made of many of the writers who wrote about the war, many of whom never went to Mexico. The chapter builds to a reading of two military memories by Raphael Semmes and Arthur Manigualt, and concludes with a presentation of Colonel William C. Falkner’s sensationist novel, The Spanish Heroine, which influenced the Colonel’s great-grandson, William Faulkner. The concept of the “tropical sublime” receives a full illustration here.
John Wharton Lowe
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469628882
- eISBN:
- 9781469628059
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469628882.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
John Lowe explodes old notions of region by exploring the effect of the Caribbean on Southern literature, and conversely, how the writers of the coastal U.S. have influenced artists “South of the ...
More
John Lowe explodes old notions of region by exploring the effect of the Caribbean on Southern literature, and conversely, how the writers of the coastal U.S. have influenced artists “South of the South.” Two chapters consider how armed conflict - the Haitian Revolution and the U.S. Mexican War - created a new awareness of the South as the northern rim of the Caribbean. Other chapters pair writers whose works map out the “Caribbean Imaginary” (Martin Delany and Lucy Holcombe Pickens); the idea of the “transnational South (Constance Fenimore Woolson and Lafcadio Hearn); common folk cultures (Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston); and overlapping narratives of resistance (Richard Wright and George Lamming). The final chapter insists on the inclusion of Cuban American writers in the canon of Southern literature, while demonstrating their importance to the emerging concept of the circumCaribbean. Employing key critics of Caribbean and post-colonial literature, such as Édouard Glissant, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Franz Fanon, Wilson Harris, Valerie Loichot, J. Michael Dash, Aimé Césaire, and Edward Said, Lowe’s reading are contextualized with hemispheric history, especially that of Cuba, Haiti, Barbados, Jamaica, Mexico, Louisiana, and Florida. His readings revolve around innovative concepts of the Caribbean imaginary and the tropical sublime, and interrogate recent critical categories, such as diaspora, the Black Atlantic, and new approaches to colonialism and post-colonialism. Calypso Magnolia contributes a striking reconfiguration of the “New Southern Studies,” the global South, and hemispheric and Atlantic Studies.Less
John Lowe explodes old notions of region by exploring the effect of the Caribbean on Southern literature, and conversely, how the writers of the coastal U.S. have influenced artists “South of the South.” Two chapters consider how armed conflict - the Haitian Revolution and the U.S. Mexican War - created a new awareness of the South as the northern rim of the Caribbean. Other chapters pair writers whose works map out the “Caribbean Imaginary” (Martin Delany and Lucy Holcombe Pickens); the idea of the “transnational South (Constance Fenimore Woolson and Lafcadio Hearn); common folk cultures (Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston); and overlapping narratives of resistance (Richard Wright and George Lamming). The final chapter insists on the inclusion of Cuban American writers in the canon of Southern literature, while demonstrating their importance to the emerging concept of the circumCaribbean. Employing key critics of Caribbean and post-colonial literature, such as Édouard Glissant, Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Franz Fanon, Wilson Harris, Valerie Loichot, J. Michael Dash, Aimé Césaire, and Edward Said, Lowe’s reading are contextualized with hemispheric history, especially that of Cuba, Haiti, Barbados, Jamaica, Mexico, Louisiana, and Florida. His readings revolve around innovative concepts of the Caribbean imaginary and the tropical sublime, and interrogate recent critical categories, such as diaspora, the Black Atlantic, and new approaches to colonialism and post-colonialism. Calypso Magnolia contributes a striking reconfiguration of the “New Southern Studies,” the global South, and hemispheric and Atlantic Studies.
