Afro-Greeks : dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean literature and classics in the twentieth century / Emily Greenwood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greenwood, Emily.

Series:

Classical presences

[Classical presences]

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Caribbean literature (English)--History and criticism.

Caribbean literature (English).

Caribbean literature (English)--Greek influences.

Caribbean literature (English)--Classical influences.

Mythology, Greek, in literature.

Physical Description:

xii, 298 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2010.

Summary:

Afro-Greeks examines the reception of Classics in the English-speaking Caribbean, from about 1920 to the beginning of the 21st century. Emily Greenwood focuses on the ways in which Greco-Roman antiquity has been put to creative use in Anglophone Caribbean literature, and relates this regional classical tradition to the educational context, specifically the way in which Classics was taught in the colonial school curriculum. Discussions of Caribbean literature tend to assume an antagonistic relationship between Classics, which is treated as a legacy of empire, and Caribbean literature. While acknowledging this imperial and colonial backstory, Greenwood argues that Caribbean writers such as Kamau Brathwaite, C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul, and Derek Walcott have successfully appropriated Classics and adapted it to the cultural context of the Caribbean, creating a distinctive, regional tradition.

Contents:

An accidental Homer : accidents of Homeric reception in the modern Caribbean

Classics as school of empire

Translatio studii et imperii : the manipulation of Latin in modern Caribbean literature

The Athens of the Caribbean : Trinidadian models of Athenian democracy

Caribbean classics and the postcolonial canon.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [253]-281) and index.

ISBN:

9780199575244

019957524X

OCLC:

430842448