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THE CREOLE PSYCHOLOGY, LANGUAGE, AND THEATRE OF DEREK WALCOTT: The Caribbean Roots of His Poetry
| Author: | Davis, Viola | |
| Year: | 2015 | |
| Pages: | 332 | |
| ISBN: | 1-4955-0402-6 978-1-4955-0402-0 | |
| Price: | $219.95 | |
This work examines the dramatic oeuvre of Derek Walcott in order to make the case that he is engaged as a playwright, in creating a “Creole” drama- a drama that bears the special marks of its Caribbean origin and setting and that embodies the hybrid nature of Caribbean history, culture and personality. This Creole reality is the result of the historical coming together of European and African values within the physical location of the Caribbean islands. The idea of “Creole” is being used to describe the result of the fusion of these three realities and this result is seen to contain a multi-cultural plentitude that is “Characteristic” of the cultural and intellectual reality of the Caribbean.
Reviews
“This study is a valuable contribution to the body of critical commentary on Walcott’s oeuvre and it entices the reader to (re) visit the plays to discover the nuances of meaning and insights highlighted and made palpable in the commentary of a rigorous critique.”
-Hazel Simmons McDonald,
Professor Emerita,
University of the West Indies
“ The greatest value of these critical essays may well lie in the fact that Viola Davis is no outsider guessing at Walcott’s dramatic purpose or ideas. She is Caribbean. She is an intellectual, well versed in classical English literature…and is well poised to write from an intimate understanding of the very creolisation; the hybridity and syncreticity that are the lifeblood of Walcott’s plays.”
-Esther Phillips MFR (Merit),
University of Miami
“Viola Davis’s critical take on the Walcott dramatic works dealt with in this collection of essays is able to connect the plays and discuss their progressive, developmental creation of a species of drama that , she argues effectively, is specific to the Caribbean in terms of its history, language and culture…Davis unpacks carefully the various levels of meaning in the Walcott plays and thus supplements the experience of the theatre with that of the contemporary critical reader.”
-Mark McWatt,
Emeritus Professor of West Indian Literature
-Hazel Simmons McDonald,
Professor Emerita,
University of the West Indies
“ The greatest value of these critical essays may well lie in the fact that Viola Davis is no outsider guessing at Walcott’s dramatic purpose or ideas. She is Caribbean. She is an intellectual, well versed in classical English literature…and is well poised to write from an intimate understanding of the very creolisation; the hybridity and syncreticity that are the lifeblood of Walcott’s plays.”
-Esther Phillips MFR (Merit),
University of Miami
“Viola Davis’s critical take on the Walcott dramatic works dealt with in this collection of essays is able to connect the plays and discuss their progressive, developmental creation of a species of drama that , she argues effectively, is specific to the Caribbean in terms of its history, language and culture…Davis unpacks carefully the various levels of meaning in the Walcott plays and thus supplements the experience of the theatre with that of the contemporary critical reader.”
-Mark McWatt,
Emeritus Professor of West Indian Literature
Table of Contents
FOREWORD/INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
FOLKSPLAY
-The Challenge to be Human in Ti-Jean and His Brothers: A Post-Structural Reading
-Deconstructing the Discourse in Dream on Monkey Mountain
-The Marriage of Derrida’s “Negative Theology” with the Theology of Malcochon, or the Six in the Rain: A Deconstructive Delight
CHAPTER TWO
HISTORICAL PLAYS:
HENRI CHRISTOPHE
-Cultural Transformation, Historical Perspectives and the Movement from “Backwater” to Center Stage: Jumping in The Last Carnival
CHAPTER THREE
EXPERIMENTAL BROADWAY MUSICAL PLAYS:
-O’Babylon: A Discourse on Marginality as Source of Creativity
-The Joker of Seville: A Feminist/ Womanist Perspective
CHAPTER FOUR
PSYCHOLOGICAL PLAYS:
-Rememberance: A Discourse of the Absence of Caliban’s Woman as an Alternative Sexual Erotic Model of Desire, as an Alternative Source of an Alternative System of Meanings
-Pantomine:<.i> A Discourse on Creolisation, Language and the Mimetic Journey from Periphery to Centre
-Franklin: A Tale of the Islands: “Place” and Misplaced Love on the Fringes of a Dying Empire
CONCLUSION
END NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX
BIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER ONE
FOLKSPLAY
-The Challenge to be Human in Ti-Jean and His Brothers: A Post-Structural Reading
-Deconstructing the Discourse in Dream on Monkey Mountain
-The Marriage of Derrida’s “Negative Theology” with the Theology of Malcochon, or the Six in the Rain: A Deconstructive Delight
CHAPTER TWO
HISTORICAL PLAYS:
HENRI CHRISTOPHE
-Cultural Transformation, Historical Perspectives and the Movement from “Backwater” to Center Stage: Jumping in The Last Carnival
CHAPTER THREE
EXPERIMENTAL BROADWAY MUSICAL PLAYS:
-O’Babylon: A Discourse on Marginality as Source of Creativity
-The Joker of Seville: A Feminist/ Womanist Perspective
CHAPTER FOUR
PSYCHOLOGICAL PLAYS:
-Rememberance: A Discourse of the Absence of Caliban’s Woman as an Alternative Sexual Erotic Model of Desire, as an Alternative Source of an Alternative System of Meanings
-Pantomine:<.i> A Discourse on Creolisation, Language and the Mimetic Journey from Periphery to Centre
-Franklin: A Tale of the Islands: “Place” and Misplaced Love on the Fringes of a Dying Empire
CONCLUSION
END NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX
BIOGRAPHY