Colonial education and cultural inheritance: Caribbean literature and the classics

My dissertation provides an analysis of the aims, practices, and history of British colonial education in the Caribbean. I trace the influence of this system of education upon Caribbean poets and novelists, focusing particularly on the reactions of these writers to the classical basis of British literary education: Greek and Latin texts. Due to the diasporic nature of the Caribbean population, Caribbean writers have no long-standing literary or cultural tradition, aside from the English model provided by their colonial education. A commonly accepted tenet of postcolonial studies is that the system of education Britain provided to its colonies was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it inculcated in many colonial students a respect and admiration for British values and culture that were essential to the smooth maintenance of a vast overseas empire. On the other hand, it provided Britain's colonies with small groups of native intellectuals with the knowledge and confidence to challenge British colonial policies and eventually to aid in the decolonization of their countries. My research consists primarily of historical and literary analysis of educational theory and of the poetry and novels of select Caribbean writers. I analyze the autobiographical writings of C. L. R. James, George Lamming, and V. S. Naipaul, as well as the poetry of Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Derek Walcott. Finally, I consider gender issues and colonial education in a discussion of the works of Jamaica Kincaid and Jean Rhys. This dissertation brings together elements of postcolonial critical analysis, particularly Homi Bhabha's concepts of ambivalence and mimicry, and elements of Pierre Bourdieu's ideas concerning education and symbolic power. The combination of these approaches should prove beneficial to scholars interested in studying the effect upon students of educational institutions that have the power to both dominate and elevate, and that rely upon carefully controlled methods of inclusion and exclusion in order to maintain institutional hierarchy and privilege.