Space as Live Experience in Postcolonial Literature. Retellings of the Caribbean

Abstract

The starting point of this lecture is Hegel’s analysis of the human being as embodied spirit, located in a here that is now, which points to a philosophy of the human environmental spaces that provides the geographical basis of his Philosophy of world history. The paper retraces how the position that natural location occupies in the imaginary of a particular period in European history figures in some fictions relating to the Caribbean and the related literary studies or re-writings. In particular, against the background of the transfer of power over nature in The Tempest, D’haen focusses on the 1847 novel Jane Eyre, where Bertha Mason is the literal embodiment of temptation, and as such also an impersonation of the lure of the tropics in the guise of its lush nature, and Wuthering Heights, where the role Heathcliff plays is close to that of Bertha for the hint at the possibility of his not being of European stock.