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Historical
Thought and Literary Representation in West Indian
Literature by Nana Wilson-Tagoe Nana Wilson-Tagoe argues that it is in the imaginative recasting of the past, more than in one-dimensional explanations of historical processes, that we find insights in Caribbean history and that it is this recasting that has shaped Caribbean literature in the 20th century. Looking at major Anglophone Caribbean writers in three genres--novels, short stories, and poetry--she analyzes the ways in which history has been perceived, constructed, and used in West Indian literature. In that context she explores the interplay of reality and the fantastic; history and the imagination; myth and ancestral memory; time-bound conceptions of the West Indies and the timeless values of life there. While discussion focuses on the interface between literature and historiography, it also addresses issues in sociology, political science, and philosophy. Wilson-Tagoe’s
work will appeal to students of Caribbean literature but
also and particularly to scholars who study the black
Atlantic world, both on its own terms and in its
relations with Western society and Africa. Nana Wilson-Tagoe
teaches African and Caribbean literature at the School of
Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She
has published A Reader’s Guide to West Indian and
Black British Literature as well as articles in Caribbean
Review, Trinidad Review, Wasafiri, and Comparative
and General Literature. 1998. 432 pp. 6 X 9. Notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0-8130-1582-0 Cloth, $55.00
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"Is an extremely useful addition to the increasing number of critical studies on Caribbean literature that attempt to break free from conventional socioliterary
approaches and to extend beyond the region's linguistic enclaves." -- Research in African Literatures "A useful contribution to the definition of a specifically Caribbean literature."
-- South Atlantic Review "An
impressive range of explorations into the ways in which the better-known male
Caribbean writers of fiction, poetry, and drama reconceptualize Caribbean
history."--Kathleen M. Balutansky, Saint Michael’s College
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