
Postcolonialisms
Caribbean Rereading of Medieval English Discourse
Barbara Lalla(Author)
University of the West Indies Press
Will be published approx. on 30. April 2008
Book
Paperback/Softback
439 pages
978-976-640-201-3 (ISBN)
Description
Caribbean revisioning of British literature is well established in creative work where it expresses itself in rewriting and writing back. In addition, Caribbean literary criticism has included an occasional rereading of imperial text (like Shakespeare's "Tempest") that seems immediately applicable to Caribbean culture. Part of mature Caribbean discourse must be a wider application of the Caribbean experience to demystifying an imperilled tradition.British literature, from the medieval to the postmodern, has been the training ground of Caribbean authors, poets and critics, and continues to be taught at secondary and tertiary levels throughout the region and in a wide range of countries that share the region's history of colonialism. Little has been done, however, to integrate Caribbean approaches to the canon."Postcolonialisms" interrogates the place of early English verse in relation to the British canon, proposing that the first postcolonial literature in English was English itself, a vernacular literature developing from a series of contact situations and evolving as a mechanism of resistance.
The enquiry integrates several approaches to textual study, drawing together on the one hand, postcolonial and Caribbean criticism and, on the other, methods of historical and contact linguistics, and applying these within a framework of thought consistent with New Medievalism.The text is framed to discuss that the society that produced Middle English literature was built on a past of contact, conquest and dispossession, with lyrics reflecting a worldview in which individual human stature shrinks and insecurity intensifies. Major texts reread include the "Canterbury Tales", "Piers Plowman" and "The Pardoner's Prologue".
The enquiry integrates several approaches to textual study, drawing together on the one hand, postcolonial and Caribbean criticism and, on the other, methods of historical and contact linguistics, and applying these within a framework of thought consistent with New Medievalism.The text is framed to discuss that the society that produced Middle English literature was built on a past of contact, conquest and dispossession, with lyrics reflecting a worldview in which individual human stature shrinks and insecurity intensifies. Major texts reread include the "Canterbury Tales", "Piers Plowman" and "The Pardoner's Prologue".
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Kingston
Jamaica
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 225 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
662 gr
ISBN-13
978-976-640-201-3 (9789766402013)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Barbara Lalla is Professor, Language and Literature, Department of Liberal Arts, University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. She is the author or co-editor of many books and articles, including English for Academic Purposes: A Distance Course for Caribbean Students; Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival; the novel Arch of Fire; and, with Jean D'Costa, Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole and Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.