Caribbean Literature in Transition: 1800-1920, 1920-1970, 1970-2020
- Submitting institution
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The University of East Anglia
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 186137297
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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-
- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Cambridge University Press
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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3
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This work took five years to research, commission, and bring to completion, and is approximately 540,000 words in length. The project demanded considerable research across collections and studies of Caribbean and early American literary works to assess the scope of the field beyond its conventional historical boundaries. Once this overview was accomplished, emerging and established critical themes and approaches were researched to determine a structure that could best illuminate transitions in this literary history and also indicate its multilingual and multilocational character. This research was represented in the 99-page book proposal to Cambridge University Press.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- These volumes offer a substantially fuller account of the Caribbean literary field by engaging with important archival and recovery work to extend the terrain for critical intervention beyond two centuries, definitely challenging the persistent focus on the second half of the twentieth century. Significantly too, while the focus remains on Anglophone writings, there is a strong recognition throughout of comparative work and the complex geographic entanglements of transversal, transnational Caribbean literary histories across linguistic groups, thereby opening up new insights on the familiar thematics of cultural distinctiveness, belonging, community, and diaspora. As General Editor of this multi-volume work, I devised the ‘four section’ structure for all volumes in order to provide delineated pathways through which contributors’ original research can trace particular modes of transition across this historical span and open up critical dialogues across periods. This is particularly valuable given that scholars predominantly work in ‘early’ or ‘contemporary’ Caribbean literary studies at present. Addressing “Literary and Generic Transitions”, “Cultural and Political Transitions”, “The Caribbean Region in Transition”, and “Critical Transitions” in each volume offers a consistently broad enquiry into literary forms; the recurring yet changing political commitments with which this writing engages; the different and defining geographical contexts and connections; and the impact of critical and theoretical transitions in terms of shaping and interrogating what literature is taken to be and to do. As well as curating the three volumes and recruiting an expert editorial team, I co-edited volume 3 and co-authored the introduction to that volume, as well as contributing a co-authored essay on Caribbean writing and revolution. My 8000-word final chapter ‘Caribbean Literature and Literary Studies: Past, Present, and Future’ reflects on the new insights offered by this fuller and longer history of the field alongside the scholarly opportunities emerging at present.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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