Afro-Greeks: Dialogues between Anglophone Caribbean Literature and Classics in the Twentieth Century

by Emily Greenwood

Overview

Afro-Greeks examines the reception of Classics in the English-speaking Caribbean, from about 1920 to the beginning of the 21st century. Emily Greenwood focuses on the ways in which Greco-Roman antiquity has been put to creative use in Anglophone Caribbean literature, and relates this regional classical tradition to the educational context, specifically the way in which Classics was taught in the colonial school curriculum. Discussions of Caribbean literature tend to assume an antagonistic relationship between Classics, which is treated as a legacy of empire, and Caribbean literature. While acknowledging this imperial and colonial backstory, Greenwood argues that Caribbean writers such as Kamau Brathwaite, C. L. R. James, V. S. Naipaul, and Derek Walcott have successfully appropriated Classics and adapted it to the cultural context of the Caribbean, creating a distinctive, regional tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199575244
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/26/2010
Series:	Classical Presences
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Emily Greenwood is Associate Professor of Classics at Yale University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Goodbye to Hellas1. An Accidental Homer: Accidents of Homeric Reception in the Modern Caribbean2. Classics as School of Empire3. Translatio studii et imperii: The Manipulation of Latin in Modern Caribbean Literature4. The Athens of the Caribbean: Trinidadian Models of Athenian Democracy5. Caribbean Classics and the Postcolonial Canon

Editorial Reviews

"Greenwood has performed an invaluable service to 'postcolinial' scholarship by her engaging account based on meticulous research...Afro-Greek is a thoughtful and eloquent account of the complex strategic space that leading Carribean intellectuals have carved out for themselves in a postcolonial landscape."—New West Indian Guide

From the Publisher