English 605.08/513.07- ” Studies in National or International English Literature” V.S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott
Instructor: Victor Ramraj
Course Description
V.S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott (both winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature), born in the West Indies, in the early 1930s, during the colonial period, respond ambivalently but in distinctly individualistic ways to what postcolonialists term their "in-between" state. Both exhibit a cosmopolitan perception of experience though Naipaul sees himself as a nomad, belonging nowhere, while Walcott remains rooted in the West Indies. Their works examine what it is to be human as well as colonial and postcolonial. As such, they invite us to ask how justifiable it is to consider them exclusively by way of postcolonial theories. Does this approach falsify these writers complex experiences? Should we see them inclusively in terms of modernism and/or postmodernism?
We will address such questions in this seminar. And, in approaching Naipaul and Walcott as postcolonial and postmodern writers, we will focus on their ambivalence in terms of the historical, sociocultural, and literary realities, contextualizing their work in relation to contemporary postcolonial and postmodern quarrels, paradigms, and preoccupations, and the authors own theories of literature and actualization of these theories in their works. The course is inherently comparative and for the sake of comparative emphasis (and pacing), we will alternate texts by the two writers rather than consider them in separate modules.
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr Biswas (1961; Penguin)
The Loss of El Dorado (1969 Penguin/Vintage)
Guerrillas (1975; Penguin)
A Bend in the River (1979; Penguin)
The Enigma of Arrival (1987; Penguin)
Derek Walcott
Collected Poems: 1948-1984 (Farrar, Straus, 1986)
Omeros (Farrar, Straus, 1992)
Some Supplementary Texts (that could be incorporated in your papers or seminars):
V. S. Naipaul
The Middle Passage (1962)
An Area of Darkness (1964)
The Mimic Men (1967)
The Return of Eva Peron (1980)
Among the Believers (1981)
Finding the Centre (1984)
Derek Walcott
Another Life (1973)
The Muse of History (1974) Is Massa Day Dead? Ed. Orde Coombs
Henri Christophe (1951)
Dream of Monkey Mountain and Other Plays (1970)
Midsummer (1984)
