Caribbean literature
Caribbean literature comprises the diverse literary works originating from the Caribbean region, which includes its islands and coastal areas. This body of literature reflects the complex cultural tapestry shaped by colonial histories, featuring texts written in English, French, and Spanish. Emerging in the twentieth century, Caribbean literature marked a significant departure from European literary models, as writers began to forge a unique cultural identity. Influenced by the oral traditions of indigenous peoples and the multicultural impact of European, African, Chinese, and Indian migrations, this literature often emphasizes themes of identity, colonialism, and social class.
Notable authors include Aimé Césaire and Nicolás Guillén, who contributed to early poetic expressions of Caribbean identity, while figures like Jean Rhys and Gabriel García Márquez introduced rich narratives that explore the region’s complexities through personal and magical realist lenses. The literature is characterized by its rhythmic quality and use of local dialects, mirroring the musicality inherent in Caribbean culture. Prominent works include Césaire's "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal" and Márquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude," which delve into the layered experiences of Caribbean life. The legacy of writers like Derek Walcott, a Nobel Prize laureate, further underscores the significance of Caribbean literature in articulating the region's unique voice and cultural heritage.
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Caribbean literature
Caribbean literature includes literary works of the Caribbean. This area includes the Caribbean Sea and its islands as well as the sea's coasts. The Caribbean Sea is located south of Cuba and Haiti, and north of South America. These works may be in English, French, or Spanish. Interest in creating culturally unique Caribbean literature rather than works patterned after European writings arose during the twentieth century.
History
The Caribbean was colonized by Spain during the sixteenth century. The oral traditions of the inhabitants were wiped out when the newcomers imposed their Eurocentric culture on the people. Literature created in the region largely followed the traditions of the colonial powers, which also included France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. These world powers introduced many cultures—including those of Africans, Chinese, and Indians—to the Caribbean, mostly through indentured servants and slaves brought to serve the Europeans.
A cultural awakening began late in the nineteenth century. Artists and writers increasingly questioned the literary traditions. During the 1920s, the cultural identity of the region first began to appear in the works of French Caribbean and Spanish Caribbean writers. This cultural and literary shift began with poets, including Aimé Césaire (Martinique), Léon Damas (French Guiana), Nicolás Guillén (Cuba), Luis Palés Matos (Puerto Rico), and Jacques Roumain (Haiti). Césaire captured the rhythm and speech patterns of the islands in such works as the 1939 book-length poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal (Return to My Native Land).
British Caribbean writers came to prominence beginning in the late 1940s, creating works using folk vernaculars. Notable contributions include the poetry of Louise Bennett and novels such as In the Castle of My Skin (1953) by George Lamming, Mystic Masseur (1957) and A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) by V.S. Naipaul, New Day (1949) by Vic Reid, and Samuel Selvon's A Brighter Sun (1952) and The Lonely Londoners (1956).
Characteristics and Works
Like the music of the islands, Caribbean literature is known for its contrasts and rhythms. The steel drum is present throughout the region, and steel pan bands beat cross-rhythms through Carnival and other celebrations. Polyrhythm, or cross-rhythm, is a simultaneous blend of contrasting rhythms. Writers employ cross-rhythm through contrasting voices and cultures—for example, colonizers and the colonized, the old and the young, and authorities and villagers—and by employing tension.
The people of the Caribbean speak various patois, or local dialects, which are similar enough to be widely understood. Many authors employ these distinctive voices in their works, many times to contrast social class, or the colonized and the colonizers. In Palace of the Peacock (1960), Guyanese author Wilson Harris contrasts Donne, a white colonizer, with the multiracial members of the crew working for him. The men are simply tools to Donne, cheap muscle to overcome the heavily treed terrain. The dialogue reflects their varying social status. One by one, the workers and leader are lost to the forest they seek to conquer.
Another notable voice in Caribbean literature was author Jean Rhys, who was born in 1890 in Dominica to a Welsh father and French Creole mother. She experienced the dichotomy of the Caribbean firsthand in her own household and as she traveled. In Europe, she was an outsider. She wrote a novel that explores the background of a well-known literary character, Bertha (Antoinette) Mason. Little is known about Mason in the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë—she is a white West Indian Creole woman who is married to Rochester and has gone insane. Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) as a way to explore the tropical experience and add dimension to Mason. The novel examines the lot of black Caribbean residents through the eyes of impoverished white Creole women in a patriarchal society. Mason and her mother are despised by many of the servants and also by white society because of their French ancestry. After her arranged marriage, Mason realizes she is an outsider in British society as well. In Rhys's novel, Rochester chooses the name Bertha for his wife, rejecting her old name as he rejects the Caribbean. Rochester does not understand her and has only agreed to the marriage because he, too, is in need of funds. Despite what the women of Mason's family regard as an almost familial relationship with the servants on the Jamaican plantation, a servant's daughter turns on Mason during a fire that destroys the house. Later, when Rochester has been told his wife's family has a history of insanity, he wishes to escape his hasty marriage. Mason seeks help from a servant, who offers her a love potion.
Gabriel García Márquez was born near the Caribbean coast of Colombia in 1927. His novels and short stories are known for their magic realism. The author took many of the fantastical tales he heard from his grandmother and aunts and adapted them for his novels. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is regarded as one of the most influential books from the Caribbean. It follows several generations of the Buendía family over a century. The course of the family history follows the rise and decline of the town its patriarch founded. The author mixes multiple times, both in the work and in characters' memories, in the village of Macondo, which is largely isolated from the world and the passage of time. As a mirror of the way the Buendías repeat their actions, time and again, the family reuses the same names generation after generation.
Author Derek Walcott was born in Saint Lucia, and is noted as the second Caribbean writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Walcott’s experience growing up on an isolated island had a strong influence on his work. After attending college, Walcott moved to Trinidad in 1953. He made his debut with 25 Poems (1948) at age eighteen, however his breakthrough came in 1962 with the publication of In a Green Night. Walcott went on to publish several works, including additional poetry collections, plays, and novels. His works often explored themes of colonialism, slavery, resistance, and the unique perspective of the people of the Caribbean. In 1992, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Bibliography
"Derek Walcott." The Nobel Prize, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1992/walcott/biographical/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
Iyer, Pico. "The Miraculous Life of Gabriel García Márquez." Time, Time Inc., 17 Apr. 2014, time.com/67474/the-miraculous-life-of-gabriel-garcia-marquez/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
Lichtenstein, David P. "Polyrhythm and the Caribbean: Intersections of Culture, History, and Literature." Literature of the Caribbean., 15 Feb. 2016, www.postcolonialweb.org/caribbean/themes/rhythm.html. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
Lichtenstein, David P. "Polyrhythm and the Caribbean: Literature." Literature of the Caribbean, 15 Feb. 2016, www.postcolonialweb.org/caribbean/themes/rhythm/litintro.html. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
Malik, Shamsa, et al. “The Quest for Self-Discovery and Hybrid Aesthetics in Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain.” Journal of Positive School Psychology, vol. 6, no. 11, Dec. 2022, pp. 716–25, EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=160248712&site=ehost-live. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
"100 Years of Solitude." Cliffs Notes. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 16 Feb. 2016, www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/o/100-years-of-solitude/about-100-hundred-years-of-solitude. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
"Palace of the Peacock Summary." eNotes, 15 Feb. 2016, www.enotes.com/topics/palace-peacock. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
"Wide Sargasso Sea." SparkNotes, http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sargasso/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.