The Poetics of Empire: A Study of James Grainger's The Sugar Cane

Cover
A&C Black, 01.03.2000 - 256 Seiten
First published in 1764, The Sugar-Cane is a major work in the history of Anglophone Caribbean literature. It is the only poem written in the Caribbean before the Twentieth Century to achieve a place in the Western 'canon'. Grainger sought to interpret his personal experience of the Caribbean through his wide and deep reading in literature, from the Greeks to Milton. Grainger wrote a 'West India Georgic', challenging assumptions about poetic diction and the proper subject matter of poetry, and boldly asserting the importance of the Caribbean to the Eighteenth Century British empire.. This is the first reliable text and critical study of the poem, setting it within the context of Grainger's life and work.

Im Buch

Ausgewählte Seiten

Inhalt

Introduction
1
Notes to Introduction
67
A Poem
87
Great Homer deignd to sing of little Mice
199
Bryan and Pereene
202
Colonel Martins directions for planting and sugarmaking
205
Ramsays account of a plantation day
208
Additional Notes to The SugarCane
213
Bibliography
313
Index
333
Urheberrecht

Andere Ausgaben - Alle anzeigen

Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen

Beliebte Passagen

Seite 233 - And, when the sun begins to fling His flaring beams, me, goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, Of pine, or monumental oak, Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke, Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
Seite 174 - The fig-tree, not that kind for fruit renown'd, But such as, at this day, to Indians known, In Malabar or Decan spreads her arms, Branching so broad and long, that in the ground The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow About the mother tree, a pillar'd shade, High overarch'd, and echoing walks between...
Seite 38 - Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes, And 'tis but just to let them live betimes. No longer now that golden age appears, When patriarch-wits survived a thousand years: Now length of fame (our second life) is lost, 480 And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast; Our sons their fathers failing language see, And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
Seite 23 - In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend ; And if the means be just, the conduct true, Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due. As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, T...
Seite 259 - Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree ? The sun to me is dark And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Seite 96 - Imperial rule of all the sea-girt isles That, like to rich and various gems, inlay The unadorned bosom of the deep...
Seite 174 - English first landed there, which was about the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century, they found in it an excellent breed of wild hogs, but no inhabitants. In the year 1627, Barbadoes, with most of the other Caribbee-islands, were granted by Charles I.
Seite 205 - He scant had twenty seen. But who the countless charms can draw, That grac'd his mistress true ; Such charms the old world seldom saw, Nor oft I ween the new. Her raven hair plays round her neck, Like tendrils of the vine ; Her cheeks red dewy rose buds deck, Her eyes like diamonds shine.

Bibliografische Informationen