On Epiphany And Anti-epiphany In Caryl Phillips’s Cambridge

Caryl Phillips (1958-) is a leading novelist in contemporary British literature andacclaimed as one of the best-known and most talented black British writers of his West Indiangeneration. The more international subject matter, the British-Caribbean perspective of hisworks and his affinity for black subjects and writing bestow over him a huge advantage anddistinguish him from the native writers such as Ian McEwan and Graham Swift; at the sametime the huge advantage also grants him enormous responsibility to fill up the blank areas inthe English realm and do the literary and historical justice to the voices buried by the grandnarrative.The thematic cores of his works range from the tensions, clashes between host andmigrant cultures, the disruption of family unit, and the inevitable conflicts between the first-and the second-generation of the West Indian immigrants to the larger transnational issues ofBlack Atlantic, slave trade and its aftermath showing great concern with how the individualssurvive, succumb to historical storms and social pathologies. The aims of his writing are notonly to define the parameters of his problem, but also to remember what the west would liketo forget and work against an undertow of historical ignorance.Cambridge, his fourth novel which was published in1991, is the typical example.Regarded as the most Caribbean and universal novel of Caryl Phillips’, since the publication,it has garnered flowering acclaims at home and abroad. Critical focuses are mainly on thereconstruction of the history, the thematic cores of displacement, ambivalent identity,belongings and diaspora, or upon the narratological techniques such as intertextuality,montage and pastiche in the novel. Few have ever made a minute and detailed study of the two characters Emily and Cambridge from the perspective of epiphany.This thesis tries to elaborate on the implications of Emily’s epiphany and Cambridge’santi-epiphany comprehensively from multiple perspectives framed within the theoreticalframework of epiphany. To be more specific, the thesis will apply a constructively integrativeand comprehensive system of core ideas concerning epiphany with its conceptulisation,functions and characteristics included, which are mainly proposed by James Joyce and somepsychologists, esp. the two eminent ones Norman K. Denzin and Ariana N. Jarvis to get abrand-new and profound understanding of the novel’s themes, characterisation and position inthe literary realm. Through a systematic study of the implications of Emily’s epiphany andCambridge’s anti-epiphany by a comprehensive analysis of the external and internal reasonsleading to her epiphany and his anti-epiphany, the thesis is to point out the refreshing andinnovative values of the novel, namely, broadening the characterisation traditionally depictedin the Black literature, sublimating the themes in this literary realm, proposing an indirect andsuggestive way to deal with the legacies of colonialism and history, shedding some sparklinglights on the contemporary world teeming with neo-colonialism, and predicting a morepromising future with a possible new mode of communal being.To achieve the above-mentioned aims, the thesis is divided into five chapters. In the firstchapter of the introduction, meticulous efforts are devoted to the general introduction of thewriter Phillips, his familial, educational and cultural backgrounds which mould his literarycareer, the thematic cores of his novels in different phases, the position of the fictionCambridge and the reasons for concentrating on it; the following part of the chapter is tomake a comprehensive summary of critical receptions of the novel which have been madefrom multifarious angles by scholars or students at home and abroad followed by a generalintroduction to the structural arrangement of the thesis. The introduction is concluded with the literary theory epiphany and the potential brand-new insights and revelations gained throughthe theoretical angle.The implication of Emily’s epiphany is elaborated upon in the second chapter from thefollowing three sections, the external reasons contributing to her epiphany with theAtlantic-Crossing journey and the colonial encounters in the contact zone mainly included,the internal reasons leading to her epiphany mainly dissected from her rebellious andcourageous temperaments, and the third section focusing on the essence of her epiphanywhich is composed of three parts, a new vision towards herself, a mutual empathy with Othersand a brand-new cognition towards her motherland and the relation between the motherlandand the colonies.The implication of Cambridge’s anti-epiphany is concentrated on in the third chapterfrom the two sections; the first one is devoted to a minute analysis of the external reasons forhis anti-epiphany with displacement, uprooting and forcible imposition of the Empire’sideology included, while the second section is dedicated to the internal reasons forCambridge’s anti-epiphany from the two aspects lactification and alienation respectively. Thechapter approaches the reasons for his anti-epiphany by adopting the main paradigm epiphanywith Spivak’s epistemic violence and Frantz Fanon’s white-mask-black-skins theories appliedfor references.Chapter four focuses upon the functions of Emily’s epiphany and Cambridge’santi-epiphany in the following aspects, broadening the characterisation depicted in themainstream Black literature, sublimating the themes, highlighting the limitations of strategiesin the literary and critical realms to do with the racial issues and legacies of colonialism, andproposing a more inspiring and suggestive solution in the area.The conclusion, the last chapter of the thesis, displays the potential insights, revelations and a brand-new understanding of the novel elicited from the theoretical angle, points out thelimitations of the thesis and implies the potential blossoming critical scene concerning CarylPhillips and his works in the future.