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Cited by 2Caribbean and African Literature and CultureCaribbean history, culture, and politicsPostcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

The DOI matches its Crossref record, with a small difference in title or year; 450 of the 450 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Obeah, Religion, and Nineteenth-Century Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean

Rodriques, Janelle·2021·Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920
DOI 10.1017/9781108647830.015
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Abstract

This essay focuses on selected works of fictional prose, published between the close of the eighteenth century and the opening of the twentieth, that explicitly treat Obeah in their elucidations of Caribbean life and expressions of anxiety ushered in by the Haitian Revolution and pending abolition of plantation slavery. ‘Obeah’, the term used for African-Caribbean ‘slave magic', is developed in these works as a literary and cultural signifier of tensions between waning European imperial power and African rebellion, between ‘black Obi’ and ‘white sugar'. This essay explores fictional representations of Obeah in and around the nineteenth century, from William Earle's Obi (1800) to Herbert de Lisser's The White Witch of Rosehall (1929), that reveal the development of Obeah during this time as a distinctly Caribbean counterculture that challenged the supposedly supreme authority of plantocratic power and become a metonym for black political agency within and beyond the discourse that would deny it those claims.

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Authors
Rodriques, J.
Corresponding author
Rodriques, Janelle
Venue
Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800–1920
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Published
2021-01-14
Pages
198-212
DOI
10.1017/9781108647830.015
OpenAlex
W3110737808
Semantic Scholar
2f272fdceeda27f96b57fa6537ef5986963038a4
Cited by
2
References
428
Citations by year
2025: 1 · 2024: 1
FWCI
0.00
Type
book chapter
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified)
Locations
Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Caribbean and African Literature and Culture
  • Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Caribbean history, culture, and politics
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
Keywords
Obeah, Caribbean literature, Haitian Revolution, abolition of slavery, plantation slavery, European imperialism, African diaspora, counterculture, religion in literature

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