Book contents
- Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920
- Caribbean Literature in Transition
- Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920
- Copyright page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Literary and Generic Transitions
- Chapter 1 Conquest Narratives
- Chapter 2 Creole Testimonies in Caribbean Women’s Slave Narratives
- Chapter 3 Jonkanoo Performances of Resistance, Freedom, and Memory
- Chapter 4 Caribbean Picturesque from William Beckford to Contemporary Tourism
- Chapter 5 From Novels of the Caribbean, to Caribbean Novels
- Chapter 6 Early Caribbean Poetry and the Modern Reader
- Chapter 7 Towards a West Indian Romance Poetics
- Part II Cultural and Political Transitions
- Part III The Caribbean Region in Transition
- Part IV Critical Transitions
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - Conquest Narratives
from Part I - Literary and Generic Transitions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 December 2020
- Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920
- Caribbean Literature in Transition
- Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920
- Copyright page
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Literary and Generic Transitions
- Chapter 1 Conquest Narratives
- Chapter 2 Creole Testimonies in Caribbean Women’s Slave Narratives
- Chapter 3 Jonkanoo Performances of Resistance, Freedom, and Memory
- Chapter 4 Caribbean Picturesque from William Beckford to Contemporary Tourism
- Chapter 5 From Novels of the Caribbean, to Caribbean Novels
- Chapter 6 Early Caribbean Poetry and the Modern Reader
- Chapter 7 Towards a West Indian Romance Poetics
- Part II Cultural and Political Transitions
- Part III The Caribbean Region in Transition
- Part IV Critical Transitions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
British conquest narratives aim to normalize and justify British rule in the Caribbean by advancing a myth of rightful conquest and of Indigenous disappearance that operated both as colonial fantasies and engines of conquest. This essay tracks some of the narrative strategies British writers employed in their perpetuation of this myth, from textual appropriations of Spanish and French narratives to literary claims to indigeneity and belonging. Reading eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British conquest narratives alongside an earlier and transnational literary history of European writing about the Caribbean, I examine how Indigenous presence belies myths of disappearance and argue that colonists conflated indigeneity and race to further their claims to rightful possession.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920 , pp. 17 - 33Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021