What sets the Caribbean apart and justifies an application of scholarly method to its own needs? What defines the world of Caribbean letters? Why not merely apply established approaches to scholarship that work satisfactorily in Western metropoles? This volume addresses these pressing questions and makes a unique contribution to the available guides for Caribbean scholars and students of Caribbean studies both inside and outside the region.

BARBARA LALLA is Professor Emerita, Language and Literature, the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Her many publications include the novels One Thousand Eyes, Grounds for Tenure, Uncle Brother, Cascade, and Arch of Fire, and the scholarly works Postcolonialisms: Caribbean Rereading of Medieval English Discourse, Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival, the companion volumes Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole and Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (co-authored with Jean D'Costa), and Caribbean Literary Discourse (co-authored with Jean D'Costa and Velma Pollard).