ABSTRACT
Perhaps the most important debates with which Caribbean writers have persistently engaged have been those concerning history – both the history of colonialism and the history of English Literature. Yet the history of Caribbean writing is rarely addressed as a subject of such struggle or contestation. This book is, in part, a historiography of Caribbean literary history and criticism and, in part, a supplement to that history which seeks to suggest new writers, texts and critical moments that might help to reconfigure the Caribbean tradition as more movable, divergent and unruly. It asks 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 concerned to explore how Anglophone or Anglocreole Caribbean literary histories have emerged and been legitimised at particular historical moments, as well as why and how we should read those texts and literary moments that no longer feed into the current set of critical demands?1
