Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Martinican poet, playwright, essayist, political figure, and cofounder of negritude. In his best-known work, Notebook of a Return to My Native Land ( 1939 ), Césaire forever changed the course of Antillean literature. Whereas Césaire's predecessors emulated classical French poetic models and hid their own cultural specificity, Césaire both depicted the evils of colonialism in Martinique and confronted stereotypical images of blacks. Armed with a surrealist aesthetic, as the title of his Miraculous Weapons (1946) implies, Césaire set out to extinguish black alienation in Martinique and to replace it with a new pride in black cultural heritage (negritude). 1981 : Modernism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aimé Césaire . 1939 (1983) : Cahier d'un Retour au Pays Natal (Notebook of a Return to My Native Land) . 1963 (1974) : Black Writers in French. A Literary History of Negritude . ... log in or subscribe to read full text