Visions of Paradise : the legacy of history of encounter in twentieth-century Caribbean writing

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between the work of three twentieth-century Caribbean writers; V. S. Naipaul, Wilson Harris and Derek Walcott, and the legacy of Renaissance accounts of voyages of discovery to the Caribbean. The aim is to highlight the prevalence of contemporary reactions to the vestiges of the history of encounter and to demonstrate that the mythic discourse of the earliest European witnesses offers a viable voice to the postcolonial writer involved in the creation of an aesthetic vision for the Antilles. History, in the Renaissance period, differs from the linear, progressive view promulgated by later writers and commentators. Renaissance visions of history owe much to narrative and myth, and this creative relationship is the reason for their centrality to twentieth-century writers.