Th.--Etud. angl.--Bordeaux 3, 1987.

McMaster University MASTER OF ARTS (2014) Hamilton, Ontario (English) TITLE: Our Words are Brick and Mortar: Masculine Reconstructions of Home in Windrush Era West Indian Migrant Literature AUTHOR: Jhordan Layne, B.A. (Western University) SUPERVISOR: Professor Daniel Coleman NUMBER OF PAGES: v, 110 / This thesis examines the concept of home in West Indian migrant literature of the Windrush Era. The analysis focuses on home as a series of reference points which construct inclusions and exclusions in a given society. I postulate that the non-white, male West Indian migrant’s idea of home endures a double disruption (in the shift from the colonial patriarchal paradigm within the West Indies and in the act of migration to England) which forces him to reconstruct a notion of home within England. In the investigation, I discover that West Indian men must learn to adapt to the concomitant societal pressures of racism, imperialism, colonialism and nationalism in England, in order to build a sense of home which can withstand such pressures. In the process of this investigation, I also discover that use of the West Indian language and the pursuit of male community building is indispensable to creating new forms of masculinity which can exist in a diasporic community without necessarily reaffirming the previous colonial patriarchal paradigm. / Thesis / Master of English

Tesis para optar al grado de Magíster en Estudios Latinoamericanos / La tesis que a continuación se presenta es una aproximación al campo de las apropiaciones de The Tempest de William Shakespeare, en el cual destacan dos versiones afrocaribeñas articuladas por George Lamming y Aimé Césaire en The Pleasures of Exile (1960) y Une tempête (1969), respectivamente. Se trata de un análisis literario y comparativo entre los dos textos con el propósito de investigar la manera en que los dos pensadores antillanos resisten y desmantelan el legado colonial para los afrodescendientes y sus países dependientes en el periodo tanto de los procesos de descolonización caribeña, como del movimiento por los derechos civiles en los Estados Unidos. El análisis se conduce por las líneas de las propuestas teóricas de pensadores caribeños anticoloniales del siglo XX que denuncian las secuelas del colonialismo para los colonizados y en sus países dependientes. Estudia, además, la representación de afrodescendientes en el personaje de Calibán, el cual los dos autores vinculan con líderes antillanos y norteamericanos de la lucha anticolonial: Toussaint Louverture y Malcolm X. Desarrolla también los temas de la transculturación y la revalorización de las identidades culturales y el desmantelamiento de la construcción de alteridad de sus Calibanes negros. Así, la tesis propone que las contraescrituras de The Tempest por estos autores afrocaribeños logran agregar al drama canónico los mecanismos para la liberación del personaje de Calibán, representante del sujeto negro del siglo XX.

This dissertation contends that The Tempest by William Shakespeare plays a seminal role in the development of postcolonial literature and criticism because it was created in a moment when the colonial system that was now falling apart was just beginning to come into being. Creative writers and critics from the Third World, particularly Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and the First found that the moment reflected in The Tempest had something very specific to say to a generation coming of age in the postcolonial world of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. I establish that a significant discourse that begins in the Nineteenth Century and intensifies in the Twentieth depends on The Tempest to explore the nature of colonialism and to develop an understanding of the postcolonial world. I then examine the role theories of adaptation play in understanding why The Tempest assumes such a crucial role and determine that the most useful model of adaptation resembles the method developed by biblical typologists which “sets two successive historical events [or periods] into a reciprocal relation of anticipation and fulfillment” (Brumm 27). I ague that postcolonial writers and critics found in The Tempest evidence of a history of colonial oppression and resistance often obscured by established historical narratives and a venue to explore their relationship to their past, present, and future. Because my argument rests on the contention that The Tempest was created in a world where colonialism was coming into being, I explore the historical context surrounding the moment of the play’s creation and determine, in spite of the contention of many historians and some literary critics to the contrary, the forces bringing colonialism into being were already at play and were having a profound effect. After briefly illustrating the historical roots of several popular themes in The Tempest that postcolonial writers have embraced, I turn to the work of writers and critics from the Third World and the First to show how The Tempest plays a significant role in postcolonial studies.

This dissertation contends that The Tempest by William Shakespeare plays a seminal role in the development of postcolonial literature and criticism because it was created in a moment when the colonial system that was now falling apart was just beginning to come into being. Creative writers and critics from the Third World, particularly Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and the First found that the moment reflected in The Tempest had something very specific to say to a generation coming of age in the postcolonial world of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. I establish that a significant discourse that begins in the Nineteenth Century and intensifies in the Twentieth depends on The Tempest to explore the nature of colonialism and to develop an understanding of the postcolonial world. I then examine the role theories of adaptation play in understanding why The Tempest assumes such a crucial role and determine that the most useful model of adaptation resembles the method developed by biblical typologists which “sets two successive historical events [or periods] into a reciprocal relation of anticipation and fulfillment” (Brumm 27). I ague that postcolonial writers and critics found in The Tempest evidence of a history of colonial oppression and resistance often obscured by established historical narratives and a venue to explore their relationship to their past, present, and future. Because my argument rests on the contention that The Tempest was created in a world where colonialism was coming into being, I explore the historical context surrounding the moment of the play’s creation and determine, in spite of the contention of many historians and some literary critics to the contrary, the forces bringing colonialism into being were already at play and were having a profound effect. After briefly illustrating the historical roots of several popular themes in The Tempest that postcolonial writers have embraced, I turn to the work of writers and critics from the Third World and the First to show how The Tempest plays a significant role in postcolonial studies.

“In Between Places” is a study in literary geography at the end of empire. It begins from the premise that decolonization itself is a question of place and the relationship of people to places. From this premise, the dissertation explores the narrative techniques that emerge from this moment of historical transformation, in which decolonization was inevitable but not yet fully achieved. The formal elements of decolonial fiction—an emphasis on the individual transformation of place, the incorporation of narrative settings both temporary and fragile—express the ways that spatial relations were central to the political aims of late colonial and early postcolonial writers from across the globe and who express a range of complicated cultural politics. This dissertation begins with an introduction that situates British decolonial fiction in terms of theories of space and place, the transition between modernism and postcolonialism, and current critical debates surrounding forms of anticolonial critique in the twentieth century. In the subsequent four chapters, the dissertation provides case studies of the narrative fiction of Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Doris Lessing. Combining formal analysis, archival research, and literary and political history, this dissertation reconstructs the ways that colonial and postcolonial subjects respond to the places they inhabit—at the level of the room, the house, and the city. To tell this story, the chapters move from the abstract space of geopolitics to different sites within urban environments and domestic households. “In Between Places” explains how place functions aesthetically and politically; how Caribbean, African, and English sites were physically marked by colonialism; and how midcentury writers of decolonization used literary setting to resist myths of imperial belonging as well as to uphold them.

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