My Strangled City and Other Essays

My Strangled City and Other Essays PDF Author: Gordon Rohlehr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Calypso musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Get Book Here

Book Description

My Strangled City and Other Essays

My Strangled City and Other Essays PDF Author: Gordon Rohlehr
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Calypso musicians
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Steelband Movement

The Steelband Movement PDF Author: Stephen Stuempfle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780812233292
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Steelband Movement examines the dramatic transformation of pan from a Carnival street music into a national art and symbol in Trinidad and Tobago. By focusing on pan as a cultural process, Stephen Stuempfle demonstrates how the struggles and achievements of the steelband movement parallel the problems and successes of building a nation. Stuempfle explores the history of the steelband from its emergence around 1940 as an assemblage of diverse metal containers to today's immense orchestra of high-precision instruments with bell-like tones. Drawing on interviews with different generations of pan musicians (including the earliest), a wide array of archival material, and field observations, the author traces the growth of the movement in the context of the grass-roots uprisings of the 1930s and 1940s, the American presence in Trinidad in World War II, the nationalist movement of the postwar period, the aftermath of independence from Britain in 1962, the Black Power protests and the oil boom of the 1970s, and the recession of recent years. The Steelband Movement suggests that the history of pan has involved a series of negotiations between different ethnic groups, socioeconomic classes, and social organizations, all of which have attempted to define and use the music according to their own values and interests. This drama provides a window into the ways in which Trinidadians have constructed various visions of a national identity.

Living in History

Living in History PDF Author: Luke Roberts
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1399519883
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Get Book Here

Book Description
Challenging received ideas about the British Poetry Revival, Luke Roberts presents a new account of experimental poetry and literary activism. Drawing on a wide range of contexts and traditions, Living in History begins by examining the legacies of empire and exile in the work of Kamau Brathwaite, J. H. Prynne, and poets associated with the Communist Party and the African National Congress. It then focuses on the work of Linton Kwesi Johnson, Denise Riley, Anna Mendelssohn and others, in the development of liberation struggles around gender, race and sexuality across the 1970s. Tracking the ambivalence between poetic ambition and political commitment, and how one sometimes interferes with the other, Luke Roberts troubles the exclusions of 'British Poetry' as a category and tests the claims made on behalf avant-garde and experimental poetics against the historical record. Bringing together both major and neglected authorships and offering extended close readings, fresh archival research and new contextual evidence, Living in History is an ambitious and exciting intervention in the field.

Afro-Greeks

Afro-Greeks PDF Author: Emily Greenwood
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191610313
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Afro-Greeks examines the reception of Classics in the English-speaking Caribbean, from about 1920 to the beginning of the 21st century. Emily Greenwood focuses on the ways in which Greco-Roman antiquity has been put to creative use in Anglophone Caribbean literature, and relates this regional classical tradition to the educational context, specifically the way in which Classics was taught in the colonial school curriculum. Discussions of Caribbean literature tend to assume an antagonistic relationship between Classics, which is treated as a legacy of empire, and Caribbean literature. While acknowledging the importance of this imperial context, Greenwood argues that Caribbean appropriations of Classics played an important role in formulating original, anti-colonial and anti-imperial criticism in Anglophone Caribbean fiction. Afro-Greeks reveals how, in the twentieth century, two generations of Caribbean writers, including Kamau Brathwaite, Austin Clarke, John Figueroa, C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott and Eric Williams, created a distinctive, regional counter-tradition of reading Greco-Roman Classics.

Critical Perspectives on Caribbean Literature and Culture

Critical Perspectives on Caribbean Literature and Culture PDF Author: Dorsía Smith
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443827649
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Critical Perspectives on Caribbean Literature and Culture is a collection of a dozen essays by Caribbean scholars living in the Caribbean and around the world. Each of the three sections of the book explores the Caribbean as a diasporic space through the lenses of literary and cultural systems. “Negotiating Borders: Women, Sexuality, and Identity” examines the creolized identities of Caribbean societies, gender roles of women, impact of sexual tourism, and censorship of Latino gays and lesbians. The essayists in this section note that much work still needs to be done in academia to give voice to repressed Caribbean populations. “Creating Spaces of Caribbean Artistic Expression: Multiple Representations” focuses on how music, identity, art, and language depict the diversity of the Caribbean experience. In this section, the essayists examine how the process of creation extends to new cultural expressions. “Deconstructing the Diaspora: Caribbean Writers as Political Activists” takes into account the tension between oppressor and oppressed, a pressing issue for many Caribbean authors, and focuses on the role of writers in reconstructing Caribbean culture, politics, and history. In pursuit of a more comprehensive West Indian view, this publication provides a novel perspective on Caribbean literary, cultural, and historical experience. The essays featured complement each other in their representation of the multiplicitous Caribbean region with all its claims and anxieties. They cover a wide range of writers and diverse cross-cultural encounters within the Caribbean region and reflect on issues such as Caribbean identity, migration, and artistic form of expression. This publication cuts across geographies, cultures, and disciplines, enriching Caribbean scholarship by recognizing the Caribbean’s tradition of resistance and courage.

Music, Memory, Resistance

Music, Memory, Resistance PDF Author: Sandra Pouchet Paquet
Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers
ISBN: 976637290X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Calypsonians have long been the 'voice of the people', delivering the complaints, criticisms and even the solutions to political leaders. In its earliest manifestations, calypso music emerged in response to a cultural climate that demanded creative modes of expression that could both resist and record political and historical changes taking place in Trinidad and Tobago. Since the 1920s and 1930s, calypsonians typically have composed songs that chronicle their observations and opinions on current events focusing on specific occurrences, from local scandals to current affairs while also examining broader trends. Not only has calypso served as an unofficial record of historical events, it emerged as a cultural weapon that yielded tremendous sway within the general audiences of the Caribbean region. This collection includes contributions from calypsonians, critics, novelists and poets alike, all engaged in representing Caribbean culture in its myriad forms. It represents an array of convergences across critical perspectives, political and social agendas, generations and national boundaries. The work of numerous calypsonians and other singers are explored, including Sparrow; Kitchener; Chalkdust; Denise Belfon; and writers such as Samuel Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Errol John, Paul Marshall, Earl Lovelace and Lashkmi Persaud. The comparative analyses provide an interdisciplinary approach to Cultural Studies making the volume essential reading for students, scholars and calypso enthusiasts. "

The Caribbean Novel since 1945

The Caribbean Novel since 1945 PDF Author: Michael Niblett
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617032484
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Caribbean Novel Since 1945 offers a comparative analysis of fiction from across the pan-Caribbean, exploring the relationship between literary form, cultural practice, and the nation-state. Engaging with the historical and political impact of capitalist imperialism, decolonization, class struggle, ethnic conflict, and gender relations, it considers the ways in which Caribbean authors have sought to rethink and re-narrate the traumatic past and often problematic 'postcolonial' present of the region's peoples. It pays particular attention to the role cultural practices such as stickfighting and Carnival, as well as religious rituals and beliefs like Vodou and Myal, have played in efforts to reshape the novel form. In so doing, it provides an original perspective on the importance of these practices, with their emphasis on bodily movement, to the development of new philosophies of history. Beginning in the post-WWII period, when optimism surrounding the possibility of social and political change was at a peak, The Caribbean Novel Since 1945 interrogates the trajectories of various national projects through to the present. It explores how the textual histories of common motifs in Caribbean writing have functioned to encode the fluctuating fortunes of different political dispensations. The scope of the analysis is varied and comprehensive, covering both critically acclaimed and lesser-known authors from the Anglophone, Francophone, and Hispanophone traditions. These include Jacques Roumain, Sam Selvon, Marie Chauvet, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Earl Lovelace, Patrick Chamoiseau, Erna Brodber, Wilson Harris, Shani Mootoo, Oonya Kempadoo, Ernest Moutoussamy, and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. Mixing detailed analysis of key texts with wider surveys of significant trends, this book emphasizes the continuing significance of representations of the nation-state to literary articulations of resistance to the imperialist logic of global capital.

Anglophone Caribbean Poetry, 1970-2001

Anglophone Caribbean Poetry, 1970-2001 PDF Author: Emily A. Williams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313077436
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Get Book Here

Book Description
Caribbean poetry written in English has been attracting growing amounts of scholarly attention. The first substantial annotated bibliography of primary and secondary materials related to the topic, this reference chronicles the development of Anglophone Caribbean poetry from 1970 through 2001. Included are nearly 900 entries for anthologies, reference works, conference proceedings, critical studies, interviews, and recorded works. The volume also includes a chronology, an overview of the development and significance of Caribbean poetry in English, and extensive indexes. In 1971 the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies held a conference on West Indian literature at the University of the West Indies. This was the first assembly for the discussion of West Indian literature by West Indian people on West Indian soil. Since then, interest in Caribbean poetry written in English has grown dramatically. Caribbean poetry was influenced by the American Black Power movement during the 1970s, and women poets began to contribute their voices throughout the 1980s. Caribbean poets have, in turn, gained greater access to publishing outlets, resulting in a wider international readership and a corresponding increase in scholarly and critical studies. This book is the first substantial annotated bibliography of primary and secondary materials related to Caribbean poetry written in English. The volume begins with the rise of interest in Anglophone Caribbean poetry in the 1970s and continues through 2001. Included are entries for nearly 900 anthologies, reference works, conference proceedings, critical studies, interviews, and recordings. The entries are grouped in chapters devoted to particular types of works. In addition, the volume includes a chronology, a discussion of the history of Anglophone Caribbean poetry, and extensive indexes.

The First Naipaul World Epics

The First Naipaul World Epics PDF Author:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9354352650
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
The plethora of commentary from highly respected voices in a broad cross-section of academic disciplines, which V. S. Naipaul's death on 11 August 2018 elicited, ranged so widely, both cognitively and emotionally, that if a student of literature, unfamiliar with the Naipaulian era, read it all, they would have failed to make sense of the divergences. Allegations included that he 'was a cruel man', 'a scarred man', 'the darkest dungeons of colonialism incarnate: self-punishing, self-loathing, world-loathing, full of nastiness and fury', 'a ventriloquist for the nastiest cliches European colonialism had devised to rule the world with arrogance and confidence' and so on. On the other hand, writers referred to Naipaul as a 'brilliant writer's writer', one 'who holds a mirror of imagination unto society to capture a certain view of reality' and one who 'has turned the genre of the travelogue into an art form'. Debates aside, many of us appreciate the value of Naipaul's writing to the deepest possible comprehension of the imperial impulse and the myriad reasons it manifested as colonialism. The First Naipaul World Epics is the first in a series of critical collections that aim to demonstrate this value. At the same time, the series seeks to help the new student through the quagmire of divergent opinions his personality and writing have generated.

Beyond Windrush

Beyond Windrush PDF Author: J. Dillon Brown
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1628464763
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book Here

Book Description
This edited collection challenges a long sacrosanct paradigm. Since the establishment of Caribbean literary studies, scholars have exalted an elite cohort of émigré novelists based in postwar London, a group often referred to as “the Windrush writers” in tribute to the SS Empire Windrush, whose 1948 voyage from Jamaica inaugurated large-scale Caribbean migration to London. In critical accounts this group is typically reduced to the canonical troika of V. S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Sam Selvon, effectively treating these three authors as the tradition's founding fathers. These “founders” have been properly celebrated for producing a complex, anticolonial, nationalist literature. However, their canonization has obscured the great diversity of postwar Caribbean writers, producing an enduring but narrow definition of West Indian literature. Beyond Windrush stands out as the first book to reexamine and redefine the writing of this crucial era. Its fourteen original essays make clear that in the 1950s there was already a wide spectrum of West Indian men and women—Afro-Caribbean, Indo-Caribbean, and white-creole—who were writing, publishing, and even painting. Many lived in the Caribbean and North America, rather than London. Moreover, these writers addressed subjects overlooked in the more conventionally conceived canon, including topics such as queer sexuality and the environment. This collection offers new readings of canonical authors (Lamming, Roger Mais, and Andrew Salkey); hitherto marginalized authors (Ismith Khan, Elma Napier, and John Hearne); and commonly ignored genres (memoir, short stories, and journalism).