Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800-1920: Volume 1

Description

This volume examines what Caribbean literature looked like before 1920 by surveying the print culture of the period. The emphasis is on narrative, including an enormous range of genres, in varying venues, and in multiple languages of the Caribbean. Essays examine lesser-known authors and writing previously marginalized as nonliterary: popular writing in newspapers and pamphlets; fiction and poetry such as romances, sentimental novels, and ballads; non-elite memoirs and letters, such as the narratives of the enslaved or the working classes, especially women. Many contributions are comparative, multilingual, and regional. Some infer the cultural presence of subaltern groups within the texts of the dominant classes. Almost all of the chapters move easily between time periods, linking texts, writers, and literary movements in ways that expand traditional notions of literary influence and canon formation. Using literary, cultural, and historical analyses, this book provides a complete re-examination of early Caribbean literature.

Evelyn O'Callaghan is Professor of West Indian Literature, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. Her published work includes articles and chapters on West Indian literature, particularly on women's writing, early Caribbean narratives and more recently, ecocritical readings of Caribbean landscapes in visual and scribal texts. She has published Woman Version: Theoretical Approaches to West Indian Fiction by Women, Women Writing the West Indies 1804-1939: A Hot Place, Belonging to Us, and edited early Caribbean novels by Frieda Cassin and Elma Napier. Most recently, she co-edited Caribbean Irish Connections and Madness in Anglophone Caribbean Literature: On the Edge. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of West Indian Literature. Tim Watson is Professor of English at the University of Miami. He is the author of Caribbean Culture and British Fiction in the Atlantic World, 1780-1870 (2008) and Culture Writing: Literature and Anthropology in the Midcentury Atlantic World (2018). With Candace Ward, he co-edited the Broadview edition of Hamel, the Obeah Man (2010).

'Caribbean Literature in Transition covers the literary, sociopolitical, and historical advancements and criticisms of Caribbean literature from 1800 to 2020 ... The set's chronological arrangement yields insights about the varied availability of information over the three centuries. Transitions in coverage of gender, culture, and political movements represented in Caribbean literature are highlighted. Overall, the set is far more comprehensive than other collections on Caribbean literature, which makes the set excellent for up-to-date research ... Highly recommended.' D. M. Jarrett, Choice Connect