Derek Walcott and the Creation of a Classical Caribbean
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Justine McConnell is Reader in Comparative Literature and Classical Reception at Kingâs College London, UK. She is author of Black Odysseys: The Homeric Odyssey in the African Diaspora since 1939 (2013) and, with Fiona Macintosh, Performing Epic or Telling Tales (2020), and has co-edited four books on the reception of Graeco-Roman antiquity.<i>Derek Walcott and the Creation of a Classical Caribbean</i> represents the first book-length study of Derek Walcott's career-long engagement with the ancient world. In it, Justine McConnel explores classical reception across the full range of Walcott's prolific oeuvre ... This book will be of immense interest to students and scholars of Derek Walcott's writings, as well as those of modern classical reception Caribbean literature, and postcolonial studies.
- Quentin Broughall, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
[Justine McConnell] has produced a well-researched and persuasive discussion of cultural âsyncretismâ on the part of Walcottâs muse that takes into account the poetâs maturation and creative evolution ⌠[A] substantial contribution to the flourishing subfield of âreceptionâ studies within the discipline of Classical Studies.
- Gregson Davis, Duke University, USA, The Journal of Roman Studies
Throughout his career, Derek Walcott turned to the literature and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome. His book-length poem recasting the epics of Homer, Virgil and Dante in St Lucia is best-known in this regard, yet Omeros is only the pinnacle of a lengthy and lively dialogue that Walcott developed between the ancient Mediterranean and the modern Caribbean. Derek Walcott and the Creation of a Classical Caribbean explores how, in developing that discourse between ancient and modern, between Europe and the Caribbean, Walcott refuted the suggestion that to engage with literature from elsewhere was to lack originality; instead, he asserted a place for Caribbean art in a global, transhistorical canon.
Drawing on Walcottâs own theoretical concerns, this book explores his engagement with Graeco-Roman antiquity from three key perspectives. Firstly, that a perception of time as linear must be coupled with an understanding of it as simultaneous, thereby doing away with the oppressive power of history and confirming the âNew Worldâ on a par with the âOldâ. Secondly, that syncretism lies at the heart of Caribbean life and art, with influences from Africa, Asia, and Europe constituting key parts of Caribbean identity alongside its indigenous cultures. Thirdly, that Caribbean literature creates the world anew without erasing the past.
With these three postcolonial conceptions at the heart of his engagement with ancient Greece and Rome, Walcott revealed the reasons why classical reception has been a rich facet of Caribbean artistry.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Homeric Shadow
Chapter 1: Time
Chapter 2: Syncretism
Chapter 3: Re-Creation
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR: Laura Jansen, Associate Professor in Classics & Comparative Literature at the University of Bristol, UK.
Each book in this groundbreaking new series considers the influence of antiquity on a single writer from the twentieth century. From Woolf to Walcott and Fellini to Foucault, the modalities and texture of this modern encounter with antiquity are explored in the works of authors recognized for their global impact on modern fiction, poetry, art, philosophy and socio-politics.
A distinctive feature of twentieth-century writing is the tendency to break with tradition and embrace the new sensibilities of the time. Yet the period continues to maintain a fluid dialogue with the Greco-Roman past, drawing on its rich cultural legacy and thought, even within the most radical movements that ostentatiously questioned and rejected that past. Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing approaches this dialogue from two interrelated perspectives: it asks how modern authorsâ appeal to the classical past opens up new readings of their oeuvres and contexts, and it considers how this process in turn renders new insights into the classical world. This two-way perspective offers dynamic and interdisciplinary discussions for readers of Classics and modern literary tradition.
Felliniâs Eternal Rome by Alessandro Carrera received the 2019 Flaiano Prize in the category Italian Studies
Editorial board
Prof. Richard Armstrong (University of Houston)
Prof. Francisco Barrenechea (University of Maryland)
Prof. Shane Butler (Johns Hopkins University)
Prof. Paul A. Cartledge (Cambridge University)
Prof. Moira Fradinger (Yale University)
Prof. Francisco GarcĂa Jurado (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Prof. Barbara Goff (University of Reading)
Prof. Simon Goldhill (University of Cambridge)
Dr. Constanze GĂźthenke (University of Oxford)
Prof. Vassilis Lambropoulos (University of Michigan)
Dr. Pantelis Michelakis (University of Bristol)
Prof. James Porter (University of California, Berkeley)
Prof. Phiroze Vasunia (University College London)
Prof. Patrice Rankine (University of Chicago)
Dr Ella Haselswerdt (University of California, Los Angeles)
Prof. Sean Gurd (The University of Texas at Austin)
Dr Rebecca Kosick (University of Bristol)
Prof. Mario Telò (University of California, Berkeley)