ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the origins of Anansi before scrutinizing the classification of Anansi stories. It focuses on to an overview of the ways in which Anansi tales were adapted to the Jamaican plantation environment. The chapter examines the literary adaptations of the stories in their contemporary context. It explains what changes Anansi has undergone in his journey into twenty-first century popular Caribbean cultural forms, such as dancehall. The chapter provides representations of the trickster spider in Jamaican society and politics. Anansi, the anarchic trickster spider of West African origin, has woven an intricate web of tales across the African diaspora. Anansi has been taken up by contemporary authors as symbolic of the future of Caribbean culture in its myriad of hybrid cultural forms, as well as an emblem of survival and resistance, he has also long been associated with gangsterism and greed in Jamaica.
