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Perhaps there is no other region in the world that has been more radically altered in terms of human and botanic migration, transplantation, and settlement than the Caribbean. Theorists such as Edouard Glissant argue that the dialectic between Caribbean "nature" and "culture," engendered by this unique and troubled history, has not heretofore been brought into productive relation. "Caribbean Literature and the Environment" redresses this omission by gathering together eighteen essays that consider the relationship between human and natural history. The result is the first volume to examine the literatures of the Caribbean from an ecocritical perspective in all language areas of the region. In its exploration of the relationship between nature and culture, this collection focuses on four overlapping themes: how Caribbean texts inscribe the environmental impact of colonial and plantation economies; how colonial myths of edenic and natural origins are revisioned; what the connections are between histories of biotic and cultural creolization; and how a Caribbean aesthetics might usefully articulate a means to preserve sustainability in the context of tourism and globalization. By creating a dialogue between the growing field of ecological literary studies, which has primarily been concerned with white settler narratives, and Caribbean cultural production, especially the region's negotiation of complex racial and ethnic legacies, these essays explore the ways in which the history of transplantation and settlement has provided unique challenges and opportunities for establishing a sense of place and an environmental ethic in the Caribbean. The volume includes an extensive introduction by the editors and essays by Antonio Benitez-Rojo, Derek Walcott, Wilson Harris, Cyril Dabydeen, Helen Tiffen, Hena Maes-Jelinek, and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, among others, as well as interviews with Walcott and Raphael Confiant.

Caribbean literature - 20th century - History and criticism --- Ecology in literature --- Nature in literature --- Littérature caribéenne --- Écologie --- Nature --- 20e siècle --- Histoire et critique --- Dans la littérature --- Caribbean literature

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"Routes and Roots" is the first comparative study of Caribbean and Pacific Island literatures and the first work to bring indigenous and diaspora literary studies together in a sustained dialogue. Taking the "tidalectic" between land and sea as a dynamic starting point, Elizabeth DeLoughrey foregrounds geography and history in her exploration of how island writers inscribe the complex relation between routes and roots. The first section looks at the sea as history in literatures of the Atlantic middle passage and Pacific Island voyaging, theorizing the transoceanic imaginary. The second section turns to the land to examine indigenous epistemologies in nation-building literatures. Both sections are particularly attentive to the ways in which the metaphors of routes and roots are gendered, exploring how masculine travelers are naturalized through their voyages across feminized lands and seas. This methodology of charting transoceanic migration and landfall helps elucidate how theories and people travel, positioning island cultures in the world historical process. In fact, DeLoughrey demonstrates how these tropical island cultures helped constitute the very metropoles that deemed them peripheral to modernity. Fresh in its ideas, original in its approach, "Routes and Roots" engages broadly with history, anthropology, and feminist, postcolonial, Caribbean, and Pacific literary and cultural studies. It productively traverses diaspora and indigenous studies in a way that will facilitate broader discussion between these often segregated disciplines.

Caribbean literature --- Pacific Island literature --- History and criticism --- Caribbean literature - 20th century - History and criticism --- Pacific Island literature - 20th century - History and criticism --- Littérature caribéenne --- Littérature océanienne --- 20e siècle --- Histoire et critique