An online exhibit
The Caribbean and Romanticism
In this first post for K-SJ+, the online supplement to the Keats-Shelley Journal, K-SAA is delighted to highlight a series of essays on the Caribbean and Romanticism that will appear in the forthcoming issue of the journal. These essays, originally conceived as part of a roundtable organized by Kerry Sinanan at MLA 2022, demonstrate how the Caribbean is deeply part of Romanticism, but how the denial of its presence in Romantic literature, culture, and scholarship is essential to upholding a traditional Romantic ideology that is inseparable from that of empire.
What follows is an accessible, online exhibit that showcases key aspects of the work of these scholars and complements the longer essays in the journal.
Introduction to the Exhibit
This exhibit was developed in collaboration with Kerry Sinanan and the other contributing authors. Some questions that drove the development of this online exhibit are:
How has Romanticism silenced the past, specifically in regard to the Caribbean?
What occlusions must be addressed and how must the discipline, scholarship and culture of Romanticism be rethought?
The Sun Never Sets
And here, beneath the green sward, rests alike
The savage native, who his acorn meal
Shar'd with the herds, that ranged the pathless woods;
And the centurion, who on these wide hills Encamping, planted the Imperial Eagle.
All, with the lapse of Time, have passed away… (Smith, Beachy Head)
