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Nobody's Nation: Reading Derek Walcott
By Paul Breslin
345 pages
- Contributors:
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- Place of publication:
- Chicago
- Publication year:
- 2001
- Subjects:
Synopsis
Nobody's Nation offers an illuminating look at the St. Lucian, Nobel-Prize-winning writer, Derek Walcott, and grounds his work firmly in the context of West Indian history. Paul Breslin argues that Walcott's poems and plays are bound up with an effort to re-imagine West Indian society since its emergence from colonial rule, its ill-fated attempt at political unity, and its subsequent dispersal into tiny nation-states.
According to Breslin, Walcott's work is centrally concerned ...
According to Breslin, Walcott's work is centrally concerned ...
Nobody's Nation offers an illuminating look at the St. Lucian, Nobel-Prize-winning writer, Derek Walcott, and grounds his work firmly in the context of West Indian history. Paul Breslin argues that Walcott's poems and plays are bound up with an effort to re-imagine West Indian society since its emergence from colonial rule, its ill-fated attempt at political unity, and its subsequent dispersal into tiny nation-states.
According to Breslin, Walcott's work is centrally concerned with the West Indies' imputed absence from history and lack of cohesive national identity or cultural tradition. Walcott sees this lack not as impoverishment but as an open space for creation. In his poems and plays, West Indian history becomes a realm of necessity, something to be confronted, contested, and remade through literature. What is most vexed and inspired in Walcott's work can be traced to this quixotic struggle.
Linking extensive archival research and new interviews with Walcott himself to detailed critical readings of major works, Nobody's Nation will take its place as the definitive study of the poet.
According to Breslin, Walcott's work is centrally concerned with the West Indies' imputed absence from history and lack of cohesive national identity or cultural tradition. Walcott sees this lack not as impoverishment but as an open space for creation. In his poems and plays, West Indian history becomes a realm of necessity, something to be confronted, contested, and remade through literature. What is most vexed and inspired in Walcott's work can be traced to this quixotic struggle.
Linking extensive archival research and new interviews with Walcott himself to detailed critical readings of major works, Nobody's Nation will take its place as the definitive study of the poet.
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Table of contents
The first page of every section is available free to non-members – click a section heading to start reading now!
- Nobody's Nation i
- Title Page iii
- Contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Abbreviations ix
- Introduction 1
- 1: Biographical Sketch 11
- 2: “Fishing the Twilight for Alternate Voices” 45
- 3: The Young Playwright in Jamaica 83
- 4: Adam's Amnesia 102
- 5: Dead Ends and Green Beginnings 127
- 6: Another Life 156
- 7: “Pulling in the Seine / of the Dark Sea” 189
- 8: Derek Sans Terre 215
- 9: Epic Amnesia 241
- 10: Post-Homeric Derek 273
- Nobody's Nation i
- Title Page iii
- Contents v
- Acknowledgments vii
- Abbreviations ix
- Introduction 1
- 1: Biographical Sketch 11
- 2: “Fishing the Twilight for Alternate Voices” 45
- 3: The Young Playwright in Jamaica 83
- 4: Adam's Amnesia 102
- 5: Dead Ends and Green Beginnings 127
- 6: Another Life 156
- 7: “Pulling in the Seine / of the Dark Sea” 189
- 8: Derek Sans Terre 215
- 9: Epic Amnesia 241
- 10: Post-Homeric Derek 273
- Epilogue - Toward a Just Evaluation of Walcott 287
- Notes 297
- Index 323