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Epilogue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Anita Patterson
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Summary

Throughout this book, I have tried to question prevailing assumptions about the regional, national and ethnic subdivisions of American literature; to explain how, and why, modernist forms appealed so strongly to black poets in the Americas; to discern the intricate, peculiar filigree of New World cultures; to uncover analogous contexts, surprising comparisons and unexamined areas of textual study; and to demonstrate that Caribbean poetry, like African-American poetry, needs to be understood within the larger contexts of transamerican modernism and the multilingual, diasporic, New World contexts of imperialism. The dense intertextual relations among Eliot, Perse and Laforgue – relations, as we have seen, that helped inspire the first stirrings of poetic modernism in the Francophone Caribbean – were fostered by their common history and cultural predicament as New World poets, and their shared, abiding and, at times, ambivalent attraction to Poe and Whitman.

My consideration of Hughes's cosmopolitan ethos, involvement with French modernism and pervasive influence in the Francophone Caribbean raises important complementarities between Hughes and Eliot. By disclosing key parallels in their lines of stylistic development, I question the widely held view that Hughes was part of a literary movement that starkly opposed and rivaled Eliot's modernism. Both Eliot and Hughes were vitally concerned that poetry should provide a cherished medium of exchange in the New World, and their amply documented influence on the formation of modernist styles in the Caribbean is strong indication of their success in this regard.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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  • Epilogue
  • Anita Patterson, Boston University
  • Book: Race, American Literature and Transnational Modernisms
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485619.007
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  • Epilogue
  • Anita Patterson, Boston University
  • Book: Race, American Literature and Transnational Modernisms
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485619.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Epilogue
  • Anita Patterson, Boston University
  • Book: Race, American Literature and Transnational Modernisms
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485619.007
Available formats
×