AFRICA IN THE CARIBBEAN IMAGINATION: A STUDY OF THE POETRY OF EDWARD KAMAU BRATHWAITE, NICOLAS BATISTE GUILLEN AND DEREK ALTON WALCOTT

AFRICA IN THE CARIBBEAN IMAGINATION: A STUDY OF THE POETRY OF EDWARD KAMAU BRATHWAITE, NICOLAS BATISTE GUILLEN AND DEREK ALTON WALCOTT

Abstract:

This dissertation examines the depiction of Africa, as a reality and as an idea, in the creative works of the Caribbean writer, using multiple theoretical approaches such as Post colonialism, Formalism, New Criticism and the Representation theory. The dissertation argues that the image of Africa in the European and Western discourse was prejudicial and preposterous due to its presentation of Africa as primal and savage, without history, as permanent and fixed and thus imperious to modification and change. Over the years, Caribbean writers have with varying degrees of success, challenged this dominant regime of encoding or representing Africa by re-inscribing a range of positive images of Africans and Black people, Black life and culture. This dissertation further postulates that the works of Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Nicolas Batiste Guillen and Derek Alton Walcott reveal a shift of emphasis from mere documentation of African survivors in Caribbean writing to an identification and foregrounding of an authentic Afro- Caribbean tradition and aesthetics. The contributions, of these West Indian poets therefore lie in the repositioning of Africa, not as a contained identity or exclusive entity but as a conglomeration of several things all of which have been significantly influenced by such negative experiences as slave trade, colonialism and imperialism. These have reshaped the African experience, identity and character as evident in the poetry of the three selected major Caribbean poets. The discourse in the dissertation spans five chapters. Chapter one is the introduction which explores the concepts and the context of the study. Chapter two analyses Brathwaite’s poetry. It focuses on how Brathwaite’s textuality is anchored on personality formation or the reinscription of the self. Chapter three explores Guillen’s Man Making Words with special emphasis on the African image and Black identity. Multiculturalism and cultural schizophrenia is examined in chapter four. Here it is argued that Walcott in his poetry, gives due recognition to how the combination of European and African heritages have influenced identity formation in the Caribbean. His art generally reveals the hybrid nature of the West Indian’s culture and the schizophrenic situation that pervades the Caribbean society. Chapter five, the concluding chapter, brings together the central arguments and findings of the study. On the whole it is established that both Africa and the Caribbean are signified as habitats or home in Caribbean Poetry: the former, ancestral, which gives spiritual and x psychological strength; the latter, real, providing the physical environment for realizing dreams, aspirations and forging new identities.

AFRICA IN THE CARIBBEAN IMAGINATION: A STUDY OF THE POETRY OF EDWARD KAMAU BRATHWAITE, NICOLAS BATISTE GUILLEN AND DEREK ALTON WALCOTT

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