Afro-caribbean Poetry and Ritual

by Griffith, Paul A.

• ISBN13: 9780230623644
• ISBN10: 0230623646
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Focusing on orally transmitted cultural forms in the Caribbean, this book reaffirms the importance of myth and symbol in folk consciousness as a mode of imaginative conceptualization. Paul A. Griffith cross-references Kamau Brathwaite and Derek Walcott's postcolonial debates with issues at seminal sites where Caribbean imaginary insurgencies took root. This book demonstrates the ways residually oral forms distilled history, society, and culture to cleverly resist aggressions authored through colonialist presumptions. In an analysis of the archetypal patterns in the oral traditionboth literary and nonliterary, this impressive book gives insight into the way in which people think about the world and represent themselves in it.

Author Biography

Paul A. Griffith is Professor of English at Lamar University. He is the author of several articles on Caribbean and African American literature and culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction * PART I: Mediating Sacred Time and Space * The Limbo: Ritual Re-entry into History * Shipwrecked in the Middle Passage: Limbo as Agon of Soul * Folk Masques: Ritualizing Time and Space * PART II: Oratorical Play * Mythic Voices: Art as the Inheritance of Responsibility * Lullabies and Children’s Games: Word as Genesis of Spirit * Spiritual Adventure through Song * Tales and Fables: Charting the Interstice * Conclusion