ABSTRACT

It is probably no surprise, given the cultural consequences of the history of slavery in the Atlantic, where slaves were isolated from their language groups and developed an extensive range of linguistic variations, that Caribbean novelists and poets have been among the most energetic transformers of colonial language. Already competent in moving through various registers of English, within what Bickerton calls the “creole continuum” (1973), their inventiveness with language is virtually unparalleled in the post-colonial world. The Caribbean has also been a productive site for the re-reading and re-writing of the canonical texts of English literature. Barbadian George Lamming, for instance, although not the first to recognize the colonial implications of Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest, is the writer who most influenced contemporary post-colonial readings.