Campbell, Christopher Michael (2004) Visions of interconnection : ecocritical perspectives on the writings of Wilson Harris and Derek Walcott. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis provides a 'green' reading of selected writings from Wilson Harris
and Derek Walcott, demonstrating each writer's profound and sustained
engagement with the philosophy, politics and poetics of environmentalism. The
environmental ethic evident in the work of Harris and of Walcott has been
fashioned in relation not only to personal experiences of lived reality in the
Caribbean, but also as a result of prevalent ecological thinking world-wide. In
addition, an integral part of the construction of such literary ecology is the
formation of dialogues with an earlier eco-literary heritage, especially the
inspiration taken from an understanding of 'green' Romanticism in the form of
the poetry of William Blake and of John Clare.
Part one of the study examines examples from across the corpus of
Wilson Harris's work, tracing the representation of ecologically-conscious
interconnected vision from his earliest published writings up until his final
novels. Harris textually re-maps journeys of incursion, ethnocentric and
anthropocentric, into the forests of Guyana to arrive at a position of redemptive
possibility for the history of the land. Part two of the study looks at the formation
of Derek Walcott's environmental ethic through his construction of an ecopoetic
body of work, which comprises various modes, tones and genres of writing.
Walcott, too, arrives at a representation of 'interconnected vision' which
demands the re-figuring of relations between humanity and the extra-human
world.
This thesis hopes to offer some insights into the reassessment of the
Romantic inheritance to literary ecology in general, and, furthermore, to indicate
how the processes of 'green' reading might be compatible with postcolonial
analysis. It is the contention that the cross-cultural nature of the eco-narratives
and ecopoetics of Harris and of Walcott locate them very much at the forefront of
discussions of cultural ecology both in the Caribbean and beyond.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Harris, Wilson -- Criticism and interpretation, Walcott, Derek -- Criticism and interpretation, Ecocriticism, Environmentalism in literature
Official Date:	September 2004
Dates:	Date Event September 2004 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Dabydeen, David
Sponsors:	Arts and Humanities Research Board (Great Britain) (AHRB)
Extent:	ii, 349 leaves
Language:	eng

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