Nobody's Nation: Reading Derek Walcott,Used

Product Description Nobody's Nation offers an illuminating look at the St. Lucian, NobelPrizewinning writer, Derek Walcott, and grounds his work firmly in the context of West Indian history. Paul Breslin argues that Walcott's poems and plays are bound up with an effort to reimagine West Indian society since its emergence from colonial rule, its illfated attempt at political unity, and its subsequent dispersal into tiny nationstates. According to Breslin, Walcott's work is centrally concerned with the West Indies' imputed absence from history and lack of cohesive national identity or cultural tradition. Walcott sees this lack not as impoverishment but as an open space for creation. In his poems and plays, West Indian history becomes a realm of necessity, something to be confronted, contested, and remade through literature. What is most vexed and inspired in Walcott's work can be traced to this quixotic struggle. Linking extensive archival research and new interviews with Walcott himself to detailed critical readings of major works, Nobody's Nation will take its place as the definitive study of the poet. From the Inside Flap Nobody's Nation offers an illuminating look at the St. Lucian, NobelPrizewinning writer, Derek Walcott, and grounds his work firmly in the context of West Indian history. Paul Breslin argues that Walcott's poems and plays are bound up with an effort to reimagine West Indian society since its emergence from colonial rule, its illfated attempt at political unity, and its subsequent dispersal into tiny nationstates.According to Breslin, Walcott's work is centrally concerned with the West Indies' imputed absence from history and lack of cohesive national identity or cultural tradition. Walcott sees this lack not as impoverishment but as an open space for creation. In his poems and plays, West Indian history becomes a realm of necessity, something to be confronted, contested, and remade through literature. What is most vexed and inspired in Walcott's work can be traced to this quixotic struggle. Linking extensive archival research and new interviews with Walcott himself to detailed critical readings of major works, Nobody's Nation will take its place as the definitive study of the poet. From the Back Cover Nobody's Nation offers an illuminating look at the St. Lucian, NobelPrizewinning writer, Derek Walcott, and grounds his work firmly in the context of West Indian history. Paul Breslin argues that Walcott's poems and plays are bound up with an effort to reimagine West Indian society since its emergence from colonial rule, its illfated attempt at political unity, and its subsequent dispersal into tiny nationstates.According to Breslin, Walcott's work is centrally concerned with the West Indies' imputed absence from history and lack of cohesive national identity or cultural tradition. Walcott sees this lack not as impoverishment but as an open space for creation. In his poems and plays, West Indian history becomes a realm of necessity, something to be confronted, contested, and remade through literature. What is most vexed and inspired in Walcott's work can be traced to this quixotic struggle. Linking extensive archival research and new interviews with Walcott himself to detailed critical readings of major works, Nobody's Nation will take its place as the definitive study of the poet. About the Author Paul Breslin is a professor of English at Northwestern University. He is the author of The PsychoPolitical Muse: American Poetry since the Fifties, published by the University of Chicago Press, and You Are Here, a collection of poems.