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Renaissance Models for Caribbean Poets: Identity, Authenticity, and The Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2005 Renaissance Models for Caribbean Poets: Identity, Authenticity and the Early Modern Lyric Revisited Lisa Gay Jennings Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES RENAISSANCE MODELS FOR CARIBBEAN POETS: IDENTITY, AUTHENTICITY AND THE EARLY MODERN LYRIC REVISITED By LISA GAY JENNINGS A Thesis submitted to the Department of English i n p a rtial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2005 The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Lisa Gay Jennings defended on April 4, 2005. _________________________ Daniel Vitkus Professor Directing Thesis __________________________ Jerrilyn McGregory Committee Member ____________________________ Bruce Boehrer Committee Member Approved: _______________________________________ Hunt Hawkins, Chair, Department of English The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Daniel Vitkus for his help with all matters scholarly and for his infinite patience when I would fall prey to procrastination and discouragement. Thank you also to Dr. Jerrilyn McGregory for her patience and Dr. Bruce Boehrer for agreeing to serve on my committee. Thanks also to Dr. Marcy North for her invaluable critique during the early stages of this process. Without the encouragement and prayers of the following friends I would still be gnashing my teeth. Thanks to Angelita Streeter for her “by any means necessary” attitude in getting me to believe in myself and this project, and her willingness to review my work. Thanks to Na’Imah Ford for her ability to see joy even in the darkest moments. Thanks to Alys Jordan for generously opening her home to me while offering the best gourmet food available. Thanks to Hyunsue Kim, Kelly Hall, Alex Vargas, Andres Johnson and Robert Powell for always believing that I could do it. Thanks to Dr. Christopher Okonkwo for enthusiastically commenting on my writing and always seeing the potential. Thanks to the Florida Education Fund for providing financial assistance and intellectual support. A very special thanks to my parents, especially my Mother, for her constant encouragement and the foresight to instill a love of reading within me. Thanks to my husband, Sean Godfrey, both for his ability to endure trial and tribulation and for his unwavering faith. Finally, I thank God for the painful and joyful lessons learned, and the strength to endure. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT v INTRODUCTION 1 1. A BORROWED RENAISSANCE: 12 THE GENDERED AESTHETICS OF UNA MARSON 2. “TO RANGE A BLIND FIELD FOR A BOUGH OF 23 LAUREL”: RENAISSANCE AMBIVALENCES IN THE POETRY OF ERIC ROACH 3. THE SWEET ENEMY: PETRARCHAN DISCOURSE 33 IN THE POETRY OF CLAUDE MCKAY CONCLUSION 45 REFERENCES 49 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 54 iv ABSTRACT Chinua Achebe has remarked “that the English language will be able to carry the weight of [his] African experience” (103). However, he warns that “it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings” (103). This project examines the ways in which twentieth-century Caribbean poets, Una Marson (1905-1965 ), Eric Roach (1915-1974) and Claude McKay (1889-1948) “alter” Renaissance forms and poetics in order to suit their own subversive objectives. Each poet demonstrates that their use of certain Renaissance forms sufficiently shoulders the burden of their unique Caribbean “experience” while simultaneously challenging social injustices. Therefore, by appropriating forms traditionally associated with whiteness and privilege, the poets defy socially- constructed notions of authenticity and point to the revolutionary potential of language. Nevertheless, due to their choice of literary form, each poet has been marginalized to some degree. This project is partly a recuperative effort to restore these poets within their rightful place in the Caribbean poetic canon. Through their poetic output, Marson, Roach and McKay reinforce the need for post-colonial scholars to create alternative theories that will account for the complexity of not only their work, but the work of similar Caribbean poets as well. v INTRODUCTION In one of his earlier poems, “A Far Cry From Africa,” Derek Walcott asks, I who am poisoned with the blood of both, Where shall I turn, divided to the vein? I who have cursed The drunken officer of British rule, how choose Between this Africa and the English tongue I love? Betray them both, or give back what they give? How can I face such slaughter and be cool How can I turn from Africa and live? (26-33). 1 Here, Walcott succinctly articulates a question that has far-reaching implications for post- colonial writers. That is, in terms of literary expression, what language should one write in? How do you choose between a “Native” tongue and that of the colonizer? Caribbean poets such as Una Marson (1905-1965 ), Eric Roach (1915-1974) and Claude McKay (1889-1948) faced the same questions as they began their literary careers. For me, what connects all of these poets is their struggle to define the meaning and purpose of their work and to channel their anxieties about writing good poetry — they did not want to produce mere “protest poetry” devoid of any aesthetic value. Furthermore, many of their poems indicate a struggle to define the proper purpose of a poet. They posed the question of purpose in this way: is a poet one who writes about aesthetic matters only? Or should a poet engage in social commentary or protest? Can a poet do both? And their acknowledgment of their Renaissance predecessors marks this struggle. To contextualize their struggles even further, I will briefly cite Caribbean scholar, Edward Kamau Brathwaite and his concept of “nation language.” Brathwaite attempts to answer the question of which language to choose. He declares: Paradoxically, in the Caribbean (as in many other “cultural disaster” areas), the people educated in this system came to know more, even today about English kings and queens than they do about our own national heroes, our own slave rebels— the people who helped to build and to destroy our society. We are more excited by English literary models, by the concept of say, Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood, than we are by Nanny of the Maroons, a name some of us didn’t even know until a few years ago. And in terms of what we write, our perceptual models, we are more conscious (in terms of sensibility) of the falling of snow– than of the force of the hurricanes which take place every year. In other words, 1 we haven’t got the syllables, the syllabic intelligence to describe the hurricane, which is our own experience; whereas we can describe the imported alien experience of the snowfall. It is that kind of situation that we are in. (8) Brathwaite then goes on to define or rather to describe what he terms “nation language” as an alternative and necessary solution to the problem of literary expression for Caribbean writers. He describes nation language as a language that is derived primarily from the oral tradition and is the “submerged area of that dialect that is much more closely allied to the African experience aspect of experience in the Caribbean. It may be in English, but often it is in an English which is like a howl, or a shout, or a machine-gun, or the wind, or a wave. It is also like the blues. And sometimes it is English and African at the same time” (13). He also attempts to distinguish nation language from dialect because dialect has often been viewed in a pejorative sense (13). However, his distinction between nation language and dialect is at best blurry. Charles Bernstein agrees that “In Brathwaite’s account, [ ], dialect is better called ‘nation language’” (7). And as Belinda Edmonson informs us, other “exasperated” critics such as Evelyn O’Callaghan have “noted [ . .] Brathwaite’s essays cannot be ‘pinned down’ to a particular ideological agenda” (110). So, for the purpose of this thesis, I shall proceed with the notion that Brathwaite’s nation language is in fact dialect.2 Brathwaite’s essay has had an important impact on how post-colonial critics read Caribbean poetry. Edmondson states, “Edward Brathwaite [ is one ] of the most influential Pan-Africanist thinkers on Anglophone West Indian Literature” (110). That is, in terms of literary expression, Brathwaite’s essay has become one of the models used to determine Caribbean literary value, measured in terms of its purported authenticity. However, Edmonson also asserts, “As politically revolutionary as [his] theory has been, it has also led Brathwaite’s literary critiques into a sort of orthodoxy of blackness” (114). Indeed, considering the brutality of English imperialism, slavery and colonialism, Brathwaite’s offer of nation language / dialect is a positive recuperative effort in terms of orality, identity and literary expression. And as Edmondson asserts, “black aesthetics ideology has provided a powerful vehicle for uniting and forwarding the political and cultural concerns of the Caribbean” (112). But his approach still limits and marginalizes Caribbean poets who do not use afro-centric or nativist language. Where then does this leave poets who fall outside of his formula? Again Edmonson affirms, “Brathwaite’s attempts to reconcile the political
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