A historiography of Caribbean literary history and criticism, the author explores different critical approaches and textual peepholes to re-examine the way twentieth-century Caribbean literature in English may be read and understood.
Structured around readings of "critical moments" in the literary history of the Anglophone Caribbean, this book examines:
*what it is that we read when we approach Caribbean Literature
*how it is that we read it and
*what critical, ideological and historical pressures may have shaped our choices and approaches.
It is, then, in part a historiography of Caribbean literary history and criticism, and in part a supplement to that history. The author explores new textual peepholes, different critical approaches and alternative moments that allow us to re-examine the way in which twentieth-century Caribbean literature in English may be read and understood from a point at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
In its discussions of the issues and debates about cultural politics, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, "Twentieth Century Caribbean Literature" makes important interventions in the current configuration of Caribbean literary criticism and history.
'This book will extend the archive of Caribbean texts in challenging and exciting ways, and is likely to initiate more generous and promiscuous readings of Caribbean writings, as well as making a valuable contribution to debates about the local and the global which are so central to postcolonial studies.'- Denise deCaires Narain, University of Sussex, UK
'it amounts to nothing less than a radical challenge to the canon of Caribbean literature and its repressions. It is the only comprehensive sketch of all the major blindspots of Caribbean literary history and criticism, identifying and correcting not only the exclusions of nationalist canons, but also of post-nationalist and feminist ones. Donnell thus puts into critical circulation a rich, unruly, and diverse body of literature.'- Shalini Puri, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Alison Donnell provides a thoroughly comprehensive guide to,and evaluation of, Caribbean literary criticism to date,as well as a justified counter position to its predominant paradigms in her recent - Wasafiri
For the most part Donnell excels in her task,that is to challenge and revise Caribbean literary criticism. Donnell brings to light a number of neglected texts while proving persuasive reasons as to why they should be included in the contemporary canon.She also provides a detailed description of regionalised literary criticism that has resisted diasporic imperatives. - Katherine Verhagen
' A stunning combination of survey, criticism, and informed reading' - Sue N. Greene, New West Indian Guide
'Donnell deploys meticulous historiography and archival research, and engages the work the work of well-known theorists and a great many critics known and not so known: one gets the sense that the book itself is, at one level, an archive.' - Curdella Forbes, The Journal of West Indian Literature
'The quality of her research, the clarity of her analysis and the bold objectivity of her arguments models a most responsible and thorough approach for anyone working through the highly politicized debates of Caribbean literature...Twentieth-Century Caribbean Literature is, rather, foundational for its comprehensive mapping and rigorous interrogation of Caribbean literature and its critical tradition. ' - Lara Cahill, Anthurium