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• W2935606612 abstract "L A N G U A G E A N D C O N S C I O U S N E S S I N S A M U E L S E L V O N ’ S A B R I G H T E R S U N BRUCE F. MACDONALD Luther College, University of Regina JLhe language of literature often distinguishes itself from the language of ordinary speech by drawing attention as much to itself as to what it says. Such an attraction to style, although not usually damaging to a critical understand­ ing of works of literature whose chief initial attraction is language, has been detrimental to the critical reputation of the novels of the Trinidadian writer, Samuel Selvon. Critical considerations of Selvon’s art have been slight. Although he has published nine books of fiction and is generally considered to be central to the West Indian literary renaissance of the 1950s, criticism of his works has been limited to a few book reviews, paragraphs, and asides in articles on more general West Indian topics, and only recently in one complete article assessing his achievement. Frank Birbalsingh’s recent article on Selvon1 serves a useful function in setting his early novels in their historic context, but even it fails to come to grips with his art in a satisfactory way except to make observations about his pathos, humour, and local colour. Birbalsingh, like most of the other writers who mention Selvon, largely ignores his use of dialect except in the observation that “his fine ear records the speech of his countrymen with the accuracy of a tape recorder.” In the little criticism there is, dialect has been mentioned almost exclusively as an element in the “local colour,” which is implied by the “tape recorder,” to the extent that Selvon’s adaptations and careful arrangements of dialect to achieve a more complex purpose than mere pathos have been ignored. In the development of the West Indian literary and critical tradition this omission is serious, and has led to considerable mis­ understanding of the uses to which dialect can be put. Selvon is often referred to by critics as merely a reference point in the debate over the use of English in the West Indies—he is the innovator; he represents the “peasant consciousness” and the “anti-colonial” use of lan­ guage. One even senses at times a protective atmosphere surrounding refer­ ences to Selvon in some critical works as if his art touched on a sensitive nerve in the West Indian sensibility. His novels are thus often easy pawns in larger discussions of West Indian literature, as well as objects of a sentimental nosE n g l is h St u d ie s in C anada, v, 2, Summer 1979 talgia. Selvon is especially associated with the romantic aura of peasant simplicity. To approach his work on this level is to distort and to miss the conscious skill with which he uses his art to overcome aethetic problems integral to the situations he portrays and the historic period he writes of. It is rewarding to leave the romantic attitude to Selvon’s works for a more concentrated analysis of what is going on in his novels, and thereby to get a glimpse of the greater complexity of his vision. Even his first novel, A Brighter Sun, which will be the subject of this paper, is carefully structured with an eye to the potential of dialect and of the complex forces at work in the 1950s in Trinidad. The romantic oversimplification of certain critical attitudes to Selvon results in a kind of rhetoric which assumes its own life and loses touch with the art which it claims to be addressing. George Lamming seems peculiarly prone to lapses of this sort. Consider the following for instance: What holds Selvon and myself together is precisely what could hold Indians and Negroes together in Trinidad. It is their common background of social history which can be called West Indian: a background whose basic feature is the peasant sensibility. Neither Sam nor I could feel the slightest embarrassment about this: whereas Naipaul, with the diabolical help of Oxford University, has..." @default.
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• W2935606612 date "1979-01-01" @default.
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• W2935606612 title "Language and Consciousness in Samuel Selvon’s A Brighter Sun" @default.
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• W2935606612 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/esc.1979.0024" @default.
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