| Abstrakt: |
Many contemporary Anglophone Caribbean writers resent their colonial education’s emphasis on British literature, especially Wordsworth’s “Daffodils” poem, which—as V.S. Naipaul, Marlene NourbeSe Philip, Jean Rhys, and Jamaica Kincaid complain—impelled them to admire a flower they had never seen. This essay explores the resentful aesthetics spurred by “the daffodil gap,” a critical trope reflecting the disconnect between colonial education and lived experience. Multicultural literature’s and criticism’s emphasis on “decolonizing the curriculum” encourages the resentful denigration of classic and beloved texts. This essay also employs a close reading of “I wandered lonely as a cloud” to demonstrate how an aesthetics of resentment misconstrues Wordsworth’s poem, which explores human consciousness rather than simply celebrating the beauty of a particular European flower. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
