Overview

Walcott's lifelong concern with painting and painters deeply inflected his aesthetics and politics. Walcott's interventions on the relationship between Caribbean and colonial history have been thoroughly scrutinised, but, arguably, Walcott was also keen to address and (re)write an art history ""of which,"" paraphrasing a line from Omeros, the Caribbean ""too"" was/is ""capable"". Contextualising and putting in conversation Walcott's published and unpublished writings (poems, plays, essays, journalism) and his drawings or paintings (privately owned and publicly disseminated) with specific artists from the Caribbean, Europe, South and North America, Derek Walcott's Painters recalibrates and sharpens our understanding of Walcott's articulation of his own politics and poetics and of the Caribbean's contributions to Atlantic and global culture.

Full Product Details

9781399512145

Table of Contents

Reviews

An always illuminating, and often brilliant, examination of Walcott's relationship with both art and artists. Fumagalli enables us to recognize Walcott's genius writ large on a broader canvas.--Caryl Phillips, Yale University Fumagalli explores in dazzling detail the extraordinary range of Walcott's connection to the world of painting and artistic creation, offering, in the process, a clear path to understanding the roots of his poetic creativity. In this inspired, painstakingly researched and persuasively argued study of the centrality of painting and the visual arts in Walcott's life and work, Fumagalli draws on her deep knowledge and understanding of his poetry and his life to unveil before us how profoundly his poetic eloquence grew out of a sustained, lifelong dialogue with paintings and painters.--Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Vassar College Fumagalli studies Walcott's literature and painting - tracing his interests in Caribbean, European and American art and their contribution to his 'verbal, visual' explorations. An encyclopedic achievement.--John Robert Lee, Saint Lucian writer Only a true friend to the man, his verse and his visual art can understand the depth and intricacy of their connections. Fumagalli is that friend, and her rich, magnificent study brims with the light he shone from his island to the world. --Glyn Maxwell, editor of The Poetry of Derek Walcott, 1948-2013 This hefty, impeccably researched volume gives us insight into much more than ""Derek Walcott's painters,"" providing a remarkable analysis of a career ""sustained by the aim to forge a vision where paint and words would [in Walcott's words in Another Life] 'cohere / and finally ignite' "" (p. 34). A masterful celebration of Walcott's work, a true gift to Caribbeanists.--Sally Price, Coquina Key ""New West Indian Guide""

Author Information

Maria Cristina Fumagalli is Professor in Literature at the University of Essex, United Kingdom. She is the author of On the Edge: Writing the Border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (2015; 2018), the first literary/cultural history of this border region, Caribbean Perspectives on Modernity: Returning Medusa's Gaze (2009), which rethinks modernity from a Caribbean perspective and The Flight of the Vernacular: Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott and the Impress of Dante (2001). She is the editor of Agenda: Special Issue on Derek Walcott (2002-2003), and co-editor of The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities (2013) and Surveying the American Tropics: A Literary Geography from New York to Rio (2013).

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available