The Labyrinth of Universality

Wilson Harris’s Visionary Art of Fiction
Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-90-420-2032-0
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 86, 564 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 230 mm, Gewicht: 1134 g

Reihe: Cross/Cultures

Wilson Harris, many times nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, is a British writer of Guyanese origin, one of the most original novelists and critics of the twentieth century, and probably the first to use and interpret the aesthetically fruitful notion of cross-culturalism. Harris's insights into the profound symbiosis between history, culture and artistic expression were initially inspired by his encounters with Amerindians in the Guyanese rainforest interior, where he led many surveying expeditions. These encounters aroused his interest in pre-Columbian peoples, who figure prominently in many of his novels and stories. His perception of the Guyanese landscape is the source of his unique narrative rhetoric, richly metaphoric language, and philosophy of existence: i.e. the epistemological and phenomenological interrelatedness between man, animal life, and nature. The present study offers magisterial, in-depth interpretations of Harris's exhilaratingly complex and shape-shifting fictional worlds.

Hena Maes-Jelinek OBE is professor emerita of the University of Liège and a member of the Belgian Royal Academy. She has written extensively on Wilson Harris' work, on British and postcolonial fiction, and on postcolonial criticism inspired by Wilson Harris's concepts. With Gordon Collier and Geoffrey V. Davis she is co-general editor of the Cross/Cultures series published by Rodopi.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Maes-Jelinek, Hena

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Postkoloniale Literaturen in Englisch, Englische Literatur außerhalb Europas

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The Myth of El Dorado in the Caribbean Novel
2 The Writer as Alchemist: The Unifying Role of the Imagination
3 Palace of the Peacock
4 The Far Journey of Oudin: A Naked Particle of Freedom
5 The Whole Armour: A Compassionate Alliance
6 The Secret Ladder: The Immaterial Constitution
7 Heartland: Between Two Worlds
8 The Eye of the Scarecrow
9 The Waiting Room: A Primordial Species of Fiction
10 Tumatumari: An Epic of Ancestors
11 Ascent to Omai
12 From The Sleepers of Roraima to The Angel at the Gate: The Novel as Painting
13 Da Silva da Silva’s Cultivated Wilderness: “Inimitable Painting”
14 The Tree of the Sun and Resurrection: Faces on the Canvas
15 Carnival and Creativity
16 Carnival and J.M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country: Ambivalent Clio
17 The Infinite Rehearsal
18 The Four Banks of the River of Space: Unfinished Genesis
19 Carnival, The Infinite Rehearsal, and The Four Banks of the River of Space: Ulyssean Carnival of Epic Metamorphoses
20 Resurrection at Sorrow Hill: Charting the Uncapturable
21 Obscure Sorrow Hill: Seminal Ground of Endless Creation
22 “Tricksters of Heaven”: Visions of Holocaust in Jonestown and Fred D’Aguiar’s Bill of Rights
23 The Dark Jester: “Unimaginable Imaginer”
24 The Mask of the Beggar: Transfigurative Art
25 The Ghost of Memory: A Meditation on the Nature of Art
26 “Latent Cross-Culturalities” in Harris and Soyinka: Their Creative Alternative to Theory
27 Ut Musica Poesis
28 Writing and the Other Arts
29 Wilson Harris’s Multi-Faceted and Dynamic Perception of the Imaginary
30 “Numinous Proportions”: Wilson Harris’s Alternative to All ‘Posts’
Conclusion: Straight Lines and Arabesques
Bibliography of Works Cited

Über Autor(innen)

Hena Maes-Jelinek OBE is Professor Emerita of the University of Liège and a member of the Belgian Royal Academy. She has written extensively on Wilson Harris' work, on British and postcolonial fiction, and on postcolonial criticism inspired by Wilson Harris's concepts. With Gordon Collier and Geoffrey V. Davis she is co-general editor of the Cross/Cultures series.