In In the Castle of My Skin (hereafter Castle) (1983), the littoral as trope provides a means for discovering Lamming's authorial license, one that speaks to postcolonial and phenomenological aims. In this semi-a...In In the Castle of My Skin (hereafter Castle) (1983), the littoral as trope provides a means for discovering Lamming's authorial license, one that speaks to postcolonial and phenomenological aims. In this semi-autobiographical novel, Lamming examines self-awareness and the process through which language and self-analysis may take shape on or be inspired by the shore's edge. Through the telling of personal stories, discussions of a colonial history, and with allusions to the social privations affecting the immediate community, Lamming represents the changing realities, the main characters ("G" and his friends) experience as they become socially aware; he highlights this transformative rise to consciousness through the use of littoral imagery in Chapters Six, Eleven, and Fourteen. In this essay, the author explores these representations using postcolonial, psychoanalytical, and phenomenological approaches, giving particular attention to Chapter Six, the longer chapter where Lamming creates a blueprint of the issues to which he will return in Chapters Eleven and Fourteen. Castle epitomizes the ways in which the littoral as trope has the potential to symbolically impact an author's text, especially a means for crafting an authorial language that demonstrates a young man's rise to consciousness and self-actualization on the shorelines of Barbados before he emigrates abroad.展开更多
文摘In In the Castle of My Skin (hereafter Castle) (1983), the littoral as trope provides a means for discovering Lamming's authorial license, one that speaks to postcolonial and phenomenological aims. In this semi-autobiographical novel, Lamming examines self-awareness and the process through which language and self-analysis may take shape on or be inspired by the shore's edge. Through the telling of personal stories, discussions of a colonial history, and with allusions to the social privations affecting the immediate community, Lamming represents the changing realities, the main characters ("G" and his friends) experience as they become socially aware; he highlights this transformative rise to consciousness through the use of littoral imagery in Chapters Six, Eleven, and Fourteen. In this essay, the author explores these representations using postcolonial, psychoanalytical, and phenomenological approaches, giving particular attention to Chapter Six, the longer chapter where Lamming creates a blueprint of the issues to which he will return in Chapters Eleven and Fourteen. Castle epitomizes the ways in which the littoral as trope has the potential to symbolically impact an author's text, especially a means for crafting an authorial language that demonstrates a young man's rise to consciousness and self-actualization on the shorelines of Barbados before he emigrates abroad.