This module examines literary representations of British Caribbean slavery between the 1750s and the 1840s and in our own postcolonial moment and explores the relationships between these two bodies of historically distinct but thematically interconnected writings.

demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the ways in which the institution of British Caribbean slavery was represented (and contested) during its own time and how writers of the postcolonial era have variously looked back to, reimagined and expanded the historical materials on which they draw.

The module will be delivered by a combination of two lectures and one seminar per week for one semester. The lectures will give an overview of the materials and ways of approaching them and be supported by handouts, usually available to students on Learning Central at least 24 hours beforehand. Seminars will provide students with a variety of learning opportunities including close textual analysis, small group discussion and informal presentation.

The particular skills of this module entail understanding the changing nature of literary representations of British Caribbean slavery from the mid-1750s to the present day. Emphasis is placed on close reading informed by historical awareness and recent critical debates in the field. Employability skills include the ability to synthesise information; operating in group-based discussion involving negotiating ideas; and producing clear, cogent and informed arguments in a professional manner.

The module is assessed by once piece of written work, as indicated below:

The essay is assessed according to the Marking Criteria set out in the English Literature Course Guide.There are otherwise no academic or competence standards which limit the availability of adjustments or alternative assessments for students with disabilities.

The main readings for this module are booksand journal articles.Students should contact the module leader as early as possible if they will require readings in an alternative format.

Indicative Syllabus

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, ed. Margaret Smith (Oxford University Press, 1998)

David Dabydeen, ‘Turner’ in New and Selected Poems (Cape, 1994)

Jackie Kay, The Lamplighter (Bloodaxe, 2008)

Matthew Lewis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, ed. Judith Terry (Oxford University

Press, 1999)

Grace Nichols, I is a Long Memoried Woman (Karnac House, 1990)

Caryl Phillips, Cambridge (Vintage, 2008)

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea,ed. Angela Smith (Penguin, 2000)

Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger (Penguin, 1992)

In addition, photocopied extracts from the following indicative materials will be used as the basis for the first week’s teaching. All are also available via ECCO, the Arts and Social Studies Library’s eighteenth-century collections online database:

Andrew Burn, ‘A Second Address to the People of Great Britain: Containing a New, and

Most Powerful Argument to Abstain from the Use of West India Sugar. By an Eye

Witness to the Facts Related’ (1792)

William Fox, ‘An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Propriety of Abstaining

from West India Sugar and Rum’ (1792)

Isaac Teale, ‘The Sable Venus; An Ode’ (1765)

Indicative topics:

• The Middle Passage
• Pro-slavery Discourse
• Abolitionist Discourse and the Question of Sugar
• Creole Identities and Anxieties
• Plantation Culture, Sexual Violence and Miscegenation
• Strategies of Resistance
• Orality and Literacy
• Narrative Voice
• Intertextualities
• Questions of Representation: Making and Breaking the Silence

(* = particularly recommended)

Ian Baucom, Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of

History (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005)*

Barbara Bush, Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650 to 1838 (Heinemann, 1990)*

Simon Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (Princeton, 2011)

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Verso, 1993)

Carl Plasa, Slaves to Sweetness: British and Caribbean Literatures of Sugar (Liverpool

University Press, 2009)*

Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (London: John Murray, 2007)*

James Walvin, Black Ivory: A History of British Slavery (HarperCollins, 1992)*

Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and

America, 1780-1865(Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press

2000)*

Detailed bibliographies for specific topics and authors will be issued in lectures.