African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
185 p, Contents: Pt. 1. Myth as a historical mode : Lo real maravilloso americano -- Lo real maravilloso in Caribbean fiction -- The folk imagination and history : El reino de este mundo, The secret ladder, and Le quatrième siècle -- Pt. 2. The problematic quest for origins -- The myth of El Dorado : Los pasos perdidos and Palace of the peacock -- Pt. 3. Myth and history : the dialectics of culture -- History as mythic discourse : El siglo de las luces, Tumatumari, and La case du commandeur -- The poetics of identity and difference : Black Marsden and Concierto barroco
377 p., Examines the representation of history in the Caribbean novel during the era of decolonization. Exploring the period from the 1930s to the 1970s, primarily in Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana, the author argues that the predominance of historical thinking in many of the exemplary novels and works of the time was not only a response to the denial by colonialism of the history of Caribbean peoples. Such prevalence was also to be found in new class relations, which began to appear during the inaugural moment of decolonization in the 1930s when, throughout the British Caribbean, popular rebellions effectively meant the end of colonial rule.
