Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T20:19:58.971Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 1 - Writing at the End of Empire

from Part I - Literary and Generic Transitions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2020

Raphael Dalleo
Affiliation:
Bucknell University, Pennsylvania
Curdella Forbes
Affiliation:
Howard University, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

Caribbean writing from the 1920s to the 1940s has not always received as much attention as the work published in England during the 1950s and 1960s. Close examination of this earlier period, however, illustrates that a wide range of fiction and poetry was published, much of it articulating aspects of a nationalist and anticolonialist perspective even as other projects arose from alternative historical contexts. Focusing on the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s also makes visible the generic and geographical diversity: poems, poetic anthologies, short fiction, and novels were written and published throughout the islands as well as in England and the United States. As a result, this early twentieth-century writing represents the range of contexts to which Caribbean writing responded: the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution; migration within the region and into metropolitan locations; the Harlem Renaissance; Marxism; attention to local ecologies that also critiques the spread of global capital; the rise of US imperialism in the region; the Great Depression; and the crisis of the British Empire beginning with the labour unrest of the mid-1930s. Consideration of single works and anthologies from the 1920s to the 1940s exposes the tensions between an indigenous consciousness and concepts of literary form imposed or absorbed at the junction of empire, migration, and coloniality.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×