Narrative Mutations: Discourses Of Heredity And Caribbean Literature (literary Criticism And Cultural Theory)

LITERARY CRITICISM AND CULTURAL THEORY Edited by William E.Cain Wellesley CollegeA ROUTLEDGE SERIES LITERARY CRITICISM AND CULTURAL THEORY WILLIAM E.CAIN, General Editor REVISED LIVES Walt Whitman and Nineteenth-Century Authorship William Pannapacker THE REAL NEGRO The Question of Authenticity in Twentieth-Century African American Literature Shelly Eversley LABOR PAINS Emerson, Hawthorne, and Alcott on Work and the Woman Question Carolyn R.Maibor NARRATIVE IN THE PROFESSIONAL AGE Transatlantic Readings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Jennifer Cognard-Black FICTIONAL FEMINISM How American Bestsellers Affect the Movement for Women’s Equality Kim Loudermilk THE COLONIZER ABROAD Island Representations in American Prose from Melville to London Christopher McBride THE METANARRATIVE OF SUSPICION IN LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA Sandra Baringer PROTEST AND THE BODY IN MELVILLE, Dos PASSOS, AND HURSTON Tom McGlamery THE ARCHITECTURE OF ADDRESS The Monument and Public Speech In American Poetry Jake Adam York THE SLAVE IN THE SWAMP Disrupting the Plantation Narrative William Tynes Cowan READING THE TEXT THAT ISN’T THERE Paranoia in the Nineteenth-Century American Novel Mike Davis RACIAL BLASPHEMIES Religious Irreverence and Race in American Literature iii Michael L.Cobb ETHICAL DIVERSIONS The Post-Holocaust Narratives of Pynchon, Abish, DeLillo, and Spiegelman Katalin Orbán POSTMODERN COUNTERNARRATIVES Irony and Audience in the Novels of Paul Auster, Don Delillo, Charles Johnson, and Tim O’Brien Christopher Donovan THE END OF THE MIND The Edge of the Intelligible in Hardy, Stevens, Larkin, Plath, and Glück DeSales Harrison AUTHORING THE SELF Self-Representation, Authorship, and the Print Market in British Poetry from Pope through Wordsworth Scott Hess NARRATIVE MUTATIONS Discourses of Heredity and Caribbean Literature Rudyard J.Alcocer NARRATIVE MUTATIONS Discourses of Heredity and Caribbean Literature Rudyard J.Alcocer Routledge New York & London Published in 2005 by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 www.routledge-ny.com Published in Great Britain by Routledge 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN www.routledge.co.uk Copyright © 2005 by Taylor & Francis Group, a Division of T&F Informa. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alcocer, Rudyard J. Narrative mutations: discourses of heredity and Caribbean literature/Rudyard J. Alcocer. p. cm.—(Literary criticism and cultural theory) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-97115-2 (alk. paper) 1. Caribbean fiction (Spanish)—History and criticism. 2. Caribbean fiction—History and criticism. 3. Heredity in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PQ7361.A43 2005 863.009′9729–dc22 2005019685 ISBN 0-203-50352-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-58089-3 (Adobe eReader Format) A la memoria de mi padre Rolando Alcocer Cetina, M.D. 1925–2002 Contents Acknowledgments Introduction viii 1