Introduction: Tracing Entanglements in the Seventeenth Century Caribbean

Abstract

AbstractThis introductory theoretical chapter makes the case for reading seventeenth-century French travel writing to the Caribbean in situ. Using Édouard Glissant’s notion of point of entanglement, it argues for a shift in perspectives that would seek to undo the colonial bias of early modern texts and seek other entangled ramifications of French Caribbean literature. In so doing, the book brings attention to ways in which enslaved and Indigenous peoples actively contributed to shaping early colonial society and, indeed, the representations of it. The first section discusses discourses of silencing around French coloniality in the period and presents the theoretical points of departures that have been guiding the work. The following section is devoted to a more thorough discussion of the notion of baroque and how this book uses it as an operative concept to read through the entanglements of travel writing. The third section gives a contextual framing for the analysis. It sketches the history of the period that the travel narratives describe and presents the population of the islands. Finally, the fourth section offers a more detailed account of the travelogues, their writers and the predicaments that dictated these texts, and ends by outlining the chapters or points of entanglement that will be approached, namely geography, the self, and language.