1,390 research outputs found
Nobel Prize-winning Author Derek Walcott to Speak March 28
No full textOXFORD, Miss. - Nobel Prize-winning author Derek Walcott is a featured lecturer March 28 at the University of Mississippi
Visions of interconnection : ecocritical perspectives on the writings of Wilson Harris and Derek Walcott
No full textThis thesis provides a 'green' reading of selected writings from Wilson Harris
and Derek Walcott, demonstrating each writer's profound and sustained
engagement with the philosophy, politics and poetics of environmentalism. The
environmental ethic evident in the work of Harris and of Walcott has been
fashioned in relation not only to personal experiences of lived reality in the
Caribbean, but also as a result of prevalent ecological thinking world-wide. In
addition, an integral part of the construction of such literary ecology is the
formation of dialogues with an earlier eco-literary heritage, especially the
inspiration taken from an understanding of 'green' Romanticism in the form of
the poetry of William Blake and of John Clare.
Part one of the study examines examples from across the corpus of
Wilson Harris's work, tracing the representation of ecologically-conscious
interconnected vision from his earliest published writings up until his final
novels. Harris textually re-maps journeys of incursion, ethnocentric and
anthropocentric, into the forests of Guyana to arrive at a position of redemptive
possibility for the history of the land. Part two of the study looks at the formation
of Derek Walcott's environmental ethic through his construction of an ecopoetic
body of work, which comprises various modes, tones and genres of writing.
Walcott, too, arrives at a representation of 'interconnected vision' which
demands the re-figuring of relations between humanity and the extra-human
world.
This thesis hopes to offer some insights into the reassessment of the
Romantic inheritance to literary ecology in general, and, furthermore, to indicate
how the processes of 'green' reading might be compatible with postcolonial
analysis. It is the contention that the cross-cultural nature of the eco-narratives
and ecopoetics of Harris and of Walcott locate them very much at the forefront of
discussions of cultural ecology both in the Caribbean and beyond
Wangechi Mutu
No full text"Published in 2010 to accompany Mutu's first major exhibition in North America, This You Call Civilization? features reproductions of her major works on paper, large-scale installations, and stills from videos as well as essays by David Moos, Jennifer Gonzales, Michelle Jacques, Odili Donald Odita, Raphael Rubinstein, Carol Thompson, and Rinaldo Walcott. Interleaved between the essays are excerpts from books, selected by Mutu, about brutal colonial repression, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Rwandan genocide." -- Publisher's website
Medusina atava Walcott 1898
No full textMedusina atava (Pohlig, 1892) Walcott, 1898 (Fig. 3A, B) MATERIAL EXAMINED. — One specimen; M486_ 2022.1.9. DESCRIPTION The specimen is umbrella-shaped and 16 mm in diameter. The velum is locally visible, forming an up to 3.3 mm wide marginal thickening. The jellyfish bears 10, thin, quite straight and radially arranged furrows originating from the centre and corresponding to radial canals (Fig. 3A, B). Most furrows join the periphery of the jellyfish. The centre of the jellyfish shows an up to 8 mm wide, star-shaped and concave structure corresponding to the manubrium (Fig. 3A, B). REMARKS Medusina atava was reported in Permian deposits from France (Gand et al. 1996), Germany (Schüppel 1984) and Italy (Ronchi & Santi 2003). In the Saint-Affrique Basin, both species Medusina atava and Medusina limnica Müller, 1978 are known from some Permian sites (Gand et al. 1996). However, Medusina is for the first time reported in the Permian deposits of the Rodez Basin. M. limnica is mainly distinguished from M. atava by showing a maximum of four radial canals. Amongst M. atava the number of radial canals is variable and can reach a number of ten (Schüppel 1984; Gand et al. 1996).Published as part of Moreau, Jean-David & Gand, Georges, 2022, New data on the Permian ecosystem of the Rodez Basin: ichnofauna (traces of protostomians, tetrapods and fishes), jellyfishes and plants from Banassac-Canilhac (Lozère, southern France), pp. 975-987 in Geodiversitas 44 (31) on page 978, DOI: 10.5252/geodiversitas2022v44a31, http://zenodo.org/record/734212
A critical edition of Derek Walcott's Omeros
No full textThe thesis is a Critical Edition of Derek Walcott’s Omeros, consisting of a Critical
Introduction and Annotations. The Critical Introduction analyses:
- Narrative
- Settings
- Metaphor and Paronomasia
- Symbolism
- Historiography
- Intertexts
- Dualism
- Autobiography
- Dialects
- Prosody.
The Annotations comment on more than 1000 references that may be obscure and on
specifics of narrative, language and prosody.
This study presents new conclusions about some aspects of Omeros:
- It challenges the prevailing view that the work is written substantially in a
variation of terza rima and shows that regular quatrains predominate.
- It demonstrates ways in which the metrics follow the sense of the narrative and
takes a more balanced position on the use of Caribbean as opposed to classical
metrics than that put forward previously.
- It identifies a paragraphic structure to the verse.
- It proposes a new prosodic structure for the significant Chapter XXX/iii.
- It extends Walcott’s recognised use of numerology into word counting the
names of characters.
- It develops the idea of Walcott’s dualism and his use of pairing and
contradiction as a dialectical method.
- It defines his wide use of paronomasia and shows that many of the puns have a
metaphorical aspect beyond mere word-play.
- It analyses some of Walcott’s symbolism.
- It identifies intertextual links to his earlier works and to some thirty other
writers, and suggests homage to Hemingway and possibly Heaney.
- It provides the first complete analysis of Walcott’s rhyme types in Omeros.
In its analysis of Omeros and in the Annotations it has included commentary from
across the critical literature, to provide some sense of other views on Walcott’s
writing, and has included as many as possible of Walcott’s own comments on Omeros
and on the writer’s task, as a background to understanding the poem
The literary impact of the Haitian Revolution
No full textThe Haitian Revolution (1 791-1804) reshaped the debates about slavery and
freedom in Europe, accelerated the abolitionist movement, precipitated
rebellions in neighbouring territories, and intensified both repression and antislavery
sentiment. Its long-term effects remain visible in the many
representations, recuperations, and invocations of the Revolution as an
exemplar of black agency. At the same time, the violence of the conflict led to
portrayals of Haiti as unregenerate and primitive, a prey to 'voodoo' and
lawlessness. Hence the recuperation of Haiti's political and cultural history, in
which the establishment of the first postcolonial nation must be accounted for
as a momentous event despite its ostensible failure, contests the tradition of
imperial denigration. The thesis addresses how the Haitian Revolution followed
by the establishment of a Black Republic, provided inspiration for writers,
artists and intellectuals throughout the Atlantic Diaspora in diverse cultural and
intellectual locations from the 1920s onwards. If public knowledge about
Haitian history has for some time now been limited in Europe and North
America, the Revolution has been a potent factor in black memory and it
remains an inspiration to Carib beans, Africans, African Americans, and Latin
Americans, as well as to radical intellectuals and artists worldwide. The thesis
studies the writings generated by the Revolution in the works of Aime Cesaire,
C. L. R. James, Rene Depestre, Langston Hughes, Edouard Glissant, Alejo
Carpentier, Derek Walcott, and Madison Smartt Bell, spanning French, English,
and Spanish, and including poetry, drama, history, biography, fiction, and
opera; while in the visual arts it considers the paintings of Kimathi Donkor and
commemorative postage stamps. My discussion addresses both critical
understandings and fictional reinventions of the Revolution's achievement and
tragic reversals. I examine the ideologies informing the analyses, and the
aesthetics of the imaginative writings, where a political stance in some cases
served to promote innovation and experimental style and in others was a
constraint
El desafío al esencialismo y lo absoluto en Omeros, de Derek Walcott: una épica de trazas
No full textUsing poststructuralist and postmodern theory, this article analyses the postcolonial epic poem Omeros (1990) by the author Derek Walcott. In using such a genre, Derek Walcott opens up a discussion on the literary canon and the role of epics. The authority of canonical genres is established through the use of some of the epic’s formal conventions in order to be subsequently questioned through the subversion of some others relating to register and perspective. In this way, Walcott establishes a poststructuralist approach to identity which is perceived as fluid, heterogeneous, and subject to transformations. The intertextuality and parody at work in the text bring to light postmodern concerns about history and the past, which are presented as non-absolute traces. In the end, the epic recovery of roots becomes in this poem an invocation of anti-essentialism. Este artículo analiza el poema épico poscolonial Omeros (1990), del autor Derek Walcott, haciendo uso de teoría posestructuralista y posmoderna. Al utilizar este género, Derek Walcott evoca un debate más amplio respecto al canon literario y al papel de las épicas. Establecer esta autoridad sirve para más tarde cuestionarla al subvertir la forma, registro y perspectiva tradicionales del género. De esta manera, Walcott afirma una visión posestructuralista de la identidad percibida como fluida, heterogénea y sujeta a transformaciones. La intertextualidad y parodia empleadas en la obra acercan preocupaciones sobre la historia y el pasado, que son presentados como trazas no absolutas. En definitiva, la recuperación épica de las raíces es en el poema una invocación de antiesencialismo
Epic relation : the sacred, history and late modernist aesthetics in Hart Crane, David Jones and Derek Walcott
No full textIn order to answer questions about the nature, viability and shape of what would constitute a modernist epic, this thesis explores three very different twentieth century writers, Hart Crane, David Jones and Derek Walcott. Rather than being a narrowly genre based study, however, I argue that in the twentieth century the ‘epic’ mode has become a malleable form with which to explore troubling legacies of history, empire and, to exhibit a dimension of the sacred in modernity. All three poets penned challenging epic poems (The Bridge, The Anathemata and Omeros respectively) in a condition of modernity. Haunted by the ruptures of history, in various ways, Crane, Jones and Walcott attempted to create an aesthetic which seeks cultural reintegration, recovery and reconciliation with the past. I analyse the formal experimental modernist aesthetic of each poet as they are anxiously and sometimes ambivalently influenced by the increasingly dominant institution of a particular form of metropolitan high modernism. This allows for a critique of modernity whilst contextualising a modernist inscription of imperialism. Finally, I show that the spiritual and religious concerns of these writers are essential in the recuperative or compensatory ideals of the epic. I argue that far from being an obsolete and impossible genre, for poets the epic is the very mode which best captures the transitions and conditions of an uneven and unequal modernity. I seek to show how through the trope of place (bridge, city, ruins, sacred sites and island), journey and the sea and other aesthetic devices, Crane, Jones and Walcott attempt to re-enchant emptied and destroyed cultural heritages
An examination of thematic patterns in selected plays by Derek Walcott
No full textThis dissertation studies Derek Walcott, the preeminent dramatist in the West Indies today, and his contributions to West Indian drama and the West Indian theater. Further, the major themes of isolation, alienation, exile, and the search for identity are closely examined as are the devices Walcott uses in his treatment of these themes. These devices include the older West Indian male as an embodiment of the themes, the white presence of America and England as typified by certain characters, and the folklore of the region including the belief in spirits and the local Anansi folktale. A review of two novels by other West Indian authors, A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul and The Wine of Astonishment by Earl Lovelace, documents the prevalence of the relevant themes in West Indian literature. Moreover, the desirability as well as the possibility of a West Indian unity as implied by the works and themes studied, is, hopefully, demonstrated
Hidden mutualities : Faustian themes in the postcolonial
No full textHidden mutualities link the work of major postcolonial writers with Marlowe's drama of
the Faustian pact - the manipulation of the material world in exchange for the soul -
written as the 'scientific' world view was emerging which accompanied the imperial
expansion of Europe and has determined the economic and social structures of the
colonial and post-colonial world.
This comparative study brings together researches in widely different fields to show
how Doctor Faustus reflects a Gnostic / Hermetic tradition marginalized within the
dominant European power structures. It shows initially how these ideas were crystallized
by Ficino and Pico from the available texts of the Corpus Hermeticum, and how they
relate to what has become known about Gnosticism and Simon Magus. Combined with
the alchemical and cabalistic traditions they form a basis for the study of Renaissance
'Magus' figures such as Trithemius, Reuchlin, Agrippa, Paracelsus or Dee, who are
reflected in Faust and in Shakespeare's Prospero in The Tempest.
The second part investigates the dual legacy of the Magus. A counterpoint between a
law-governed objective material world and an occult visionary pursuit of the divine
potential of the human imagination, in which the Gnostic / Hermetic tradition ironically
became marginalized by the technological science it had inspired, is traced through the
examples of Kepler, Fludd, Newton, Blake, Kipling, Crowley, Yeats, Pauli and Jung.
In the third part, textual analysis reveals how attention to these Faustian themes
opens new critical perspectives in appreciating the works of postcolonial writers, in
particular Dimetos by Athol Fugard, Disappearance by David Dabydeen, Omeros by
Derek Walcott, and the novels of Wilson Harris, all of which stress the importance of the
creative imagination over mimesis
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