Negotiating History, Negotiating Identity

Caryl Phillips, a contemporary British novelist of Caribbean origin, is attracting increasingly wide critical attention in the academic circle in recent years. His novel Cambridge, which has received relatively less critical attention compared to his several later novels, is a complicated and profound historical narrative of multiple layers. Most critics, in their readings, focus on the issues of identity, belonging and displacement, but very few studies have been made on the problem of representing history and power relations in the novel. This thesis tries to interpret Cambridge comprehensively with multiple perspectives framed within the paradigm of new historicism. By a detailed textual analysis of the novel, the present study investigates how Phillips in Cambridge erases the boundary of history and fiction, subverts the simple dichotomy of the repressed and repressor, and breaks the myth of absolute historical truth.The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction featuring an explanation about the aim of study, a review of the scholarship that has been achieved and a discussion of the theoretical framework. Chapter Two explores why Phillips has been so obsessed with history and what the relation is between history and identity. Chapter Three applies the two main notions of new historicism, i.e. the historicity of text and the textuality of history, to analyze how the novel deconstructs the history as single and authentic. Chapter Four deals with the power relations reflected in the novel. Two types of power relations are examined: the power relations between the colonizer and the colonized, and the power relations between men and women. Chapter Five is the conclusion which points out that Caryl Phillips and new historicists share some important notions concerning literature, history and politics, but more than that, Caryl Phillips's Cambridge has also surpassed the limitations of new historicism and avoided falling into the traps new historicists have set for themselves, thus providing illuminations for the future development of new historicism.