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Part of
A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery: The Atlantic world and beyond
Edited by Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Madeleine Dobie and Mads Anders Baggesgaard
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXVII] 2025
► pp. 24–39

Chapter 2
“Some slave is rotting in this manorial lake”

Fictions of memory in Derek Walcott and Édouard Glissant

Derek Walcott and Édouard Glissant are two major Caribbean authors of the twentieth century who are seldom studied in a comparative approach, despite overarching similarities that provide insights into Caribbean literature as a whole. Their approach to a fundamental aspect of history in the Caribbean, that of slavery, is similar in that they perceive these plural histories to be incomplete, fragmentary, and lacking positive meaning. For both authors, retracing the history of slavery means memorializing it through fiction (in the sense of literary invention), used as a tool for questioning dominant narratives and traditional historical epistemologies. They both create idiosyncratic, sometimes voluntarily anachronistic, memories of slavery to represent silenced voices and provide a reconciliatory vision of the past.
Keywords: slavery, Caribbean, Walcott, Glissant, English-language literature, French-language literature, postcolonial studies, comparative literature, heuristic function of fiction, memorialization
Article outline
  • Memory and history in the Caribbean
  • The void of history
  • Reclaiming history
  • Building meaning through fiction
  • Conclusion: The value of symbolic memory
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
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References (29)
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