Landscape as a Chaotic Representation of European Influence in Aimé Cesaire’s Notebook of a Return to a Native Land

Abstract

Landscape is used as a tool to bring to the fore the reverberations of the past and is employed as a vehicle for cultural interrogation and native evaluation. What is imperative in the analysis of Caribbean poetry, is the heightened attention that is placed on the natural landscape of the islands. This paper discusses how landscape is manipulated and presented as the frame for the search for identity which the speaker in Notebook of a Return to a Native Land grapples with. Cesaire, or more specifically, the speaker, uses landscape both metaphorically and literally to evaluate and define identity. Studying the complexities of Landscape is not a new feat with regards to A Notebook of a Return to a Native Land, however this paper takes it a step further as to situate landscape as the binding force of all other branches of thought that the speaker presents in the poem.