The Imagery of Sea and Land in Fred D'Aguiar's Feeding the Ghosts

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature grade: 10 University of Hannover (Englisches Seminar) course: HS Caribbean Literature and Culture language: English abstract: (...) The novel belongs to the genre of the Caribbean novels and as a historical fiction about the slave trade provocatively combines historical and imaginative elements. Thus it can be subsumed under the term revisionist historical novel which according to Ansgar Nünning denotes novels that maintain a positive tension between their status as literature and their status as history (cf. Thieme 1121; Pichler 6 11). Feeding the Ghosts is based on the infamous Zong Massacre which took place in 1781. It was an incident in which 133 slaves were thrown overboard an English slave ship leading to a civil action in the same year by the ship's owners who sued their insurers for compensation for the dead slaves. The publicity about the law suit and the concluding verdict which confirmed the legal status of slaves as cargo fostered abolitionist support and made them a landmark of the battle against British slave trade in the 18th century. Due to growing public indignation a parliamentary act was finally passed in 1790 which ruled out insurance claims resulting from slave mortality or the jettison of slaves on any account (cf. Low 106 et seq.; Pichler 6; Philp 245; Baucom 61 et seq. Frias 421 Schatteman 234; James 327).In order to recreate the trauma of the Middle Passage D' Aguiar's fictionalised treatment of the Zong Massacre and of the subsequent trial mainly focuses on the reconstruction of the events from a slave girl's point of view (cf. Schatteman 234 Phil 245; Carr Pichler 11).Since the most prominent feature of D' Aguiar's fiction is his poetic style which is an object of acclaim as well as of critical reprimand (cf. Steward 68; Figueredo 211; Frias 418; James 327; Bovenschen; Low 110; Schatteman 23