FRINK Linked Data Fragments server

Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W2040347022> ?p ?o ?g. }

• W2040347022 endingPage "694" @default.
• W2040347022 startingPage "669" @default.
• W2040347022 abstract "Exile and Cunning:The Tactical Difficulties of George Lamming J. Dillon Brown (bio) Let us never cease from thinking—what is this civilization in which we find ourselves? Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas George Lamming is one of an important group of pioneering Caribbean novelists, commonly called the Windrush generation, who are given credit for the efflorescence of West Indian fiction in the 1950s.1 Like those of his contemporaries, Lamming's novels—contemporaneous with political independence movements across the region—were strongly invested in establishing a specifically anticolonial regional-national cultural identity. The criticism that has subsequently grown up around his work has accordingly focused on issues relating to its Caribbean contexts and resonances. While such examinations have clear importance (and certainly comply with Lamming's intentions of exerting social and political influence at home), they tend to overlook an important aspect of the novels' production: these foundational West Indian novels were written and published in London, the metropolitan capital of the British Empire. Although it may seem counterintuitive to discuss such polemically anticolonial literature in its metropolitan context, the importance of this context should not be overlooked. Indeed, [End Page 669] Lamming himself ruefully acknowledges in The Pleasures of Exile that in the postwar years he had no real West Indian audience but instead wrote always for the foreign reader (43), as the circuits of capital, criticism, and publishing seemed to necessitate an engagement with the imperial culture against which he was committed to writing.2 Thus, although the normative critical approach to Lamming's work is to see it as exilic, postcolonial literature and hence to return it to its rightful (West Indian) place, I propose to read Lamming's novels as immigrant literature, as works that are not simply out of place but also firmly situated in a new context—addressed to a foreign (English) reader. This type of reading, itself immigrating into alien territory within the discipline, provides an important vantage point on one of the least understood and critically disputatious elements of Lamming's writing: the turbid difficulty of his prose style. In a West Indian context in which literacy, let alone literariness, could hardly be taken for granted, Lamming's difficulty can be (too) easily dismissed as an elitist, politically incoherent gesture; however, placed in the context of postwar London, difficulty takes on the guise of a potent political strategy that helps articulate a sense of Caribbean nationalism and anticolonial protest. From virtually the beginning of his publishing career, Lamming's writing has been described as difficult. As early as January 4, 1948, in the first Caribbean Voices program dedicated exclusively to Lamming's work, editor Henry Swanzy's introduction of Lamming captured the ambiguous effects of his writing, with Swanzy asserting that in the poems about to be read, one finds a strange, oblique, violent, passionate emotion, which I feel, somehow, may prove of importance to the Caribbean (Caribbean Voices). His qualifying somehow betrays doubt in his own ability to gauge the precise meaning and import of Lamming's work, an uncertainty explicitly articulated in his commentary after the first poem is read: We start with that rather mysterious poem because it seems typical of this writer, who never [End Page 670] says, straight out, exactly what he means. Swanzy thus introduces difficulty as an identifying characteristic of Lamming's work, while maintaining with cautious imprecision that the work is, somehow, meaningful and important. Such critical evaluations of Lamming as difficult—many, indeed, negatively critical—have continued until today. More recent books on Lamming by Simon Gikandi, A. J. Simoes da Silva, and Supriya Nair note his difficult style, while Rudolf Bader sees fit to begin his entry discussing Lamming's work in the encyclopedic International Literature in English: Essays on the Major Writers with the caveat that many readers find George Lamming's novels difficult (143). For his part, Lamming seems to welcome the critical consensus that he is a difficult writer, saying, This means that I have to be read more slowly than would be the case with some writers, which I think is a good thing (Interview 11).3 Lamming's view of the salutary effects of reading more slowly..." @default.
• W2040347022 created "2016-06-24" @default.
• W2040347022 creator A5090515913 @default.
• W2040347022 date "2006-01-01" @default.
• W2040347022 modified "2023-10-06" @default.
• W2040347022 title "Exile and Cunning: The Tactical Difficulties of George Lamming" @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1485995441 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1496286386 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1521061759 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1524382271 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1534153884 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1565372716 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1582685140 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1589994416 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1591965929 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1751686940 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1802065676 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1892073993 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1968790340 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1972125255 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W1996903723 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2004077034 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2020480267 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2040808614 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2065436315 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2070703080 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2072936630 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2074805514 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2080495974 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2091907520 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2095004281 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2100404279 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2319890910 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2329477504 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2801360371 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2982098454 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2998946815 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W3144870955 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W318114372 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W565316366 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W567871122 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W572031961 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W625113099 @default.
• W2040347022 cites W2316784298 @default.
• W2040347022 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/cli.2007.0012" @default.
• W2040347022 hasPublicationYear "2006" @default.
• W2040347022 type Work @default.
• W2040347022 sameAs 2040347022 @default.
• W2040347022 citedByCount "11" @default.
• W2040347022 countsByYear W20403470222012 @default.
• W2040347022 countsByYear W20403470222013 @default.
• W2040347022 countsByYear W20403470222017 @default.
• W2040347022 countsByYear W20403470222018 @default.
• W2040347022 countsByYear W20403470222019 @default.
• W2040347022 countsByYear W20403470222021 @default.
• W2040347022 crossrefType "journal-article" @default.
• W2040347022 hasAuthorship W2040347022A5090515913 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C144024400 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C166957645 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C17744445 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C199539241 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C2779343474 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C29595303 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C7991579 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C94625758 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConcept C95457728 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C124952713 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C142362112 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C144024400 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C166957645 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C17744445 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C199539241 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C2779343474 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C29595303 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C7991579 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C94625758 @default.
• W2040347022 hasConceptScore W2040347022C95457728 @default.
• W2040347022 hasIssue "4" @default.
• W2040347022 hasLocation W20403470221 @default.
• W2040347022 hasOpenAccess W2040347022 @default.
• W2040347022 hasPrimaryLocation W20403470221 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W1532027617 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W2022848510 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W2062252687 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W2367803231 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W2370863713 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W2383040752 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W2393711885 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W2619382063 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W2748952813 @default.
• W2040347022 hasRelatedWork W4283259377 @default.
• W2040347022 hasVolume "47" @default.
• W2040347022 isParatext "false" @default.
• W2040347022 isRetracted "false" @default.
• W2040347022 magId "2040347022" @default.
• W2040347022 workType "article" @default.