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    Ferdinand Levy: A Harlem Renaissance Dubliner and De-Colonial Cosmopolitanism


    O’Hanlon, Karl (2024) Ferdinand Levy: A Harlem Renaissance Dubliner and De-Colonial Cosmopolitanism. Journal of Modern Literature, 47 (3). pp. 124-144. ISSN 1529-1464

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    Abstract

    Flashes from the Dark was the 1941 debut by Jamaican poet Ferdinand Levy, published in Dublin while he was a medical student. It brought something of the Harlem Renaissance to Lower Baggot Street. Despite favorable reviews by Irish poets such as Austin Clarke and others, Levy has vanished from literary posterity. His many passions—literary, political, musical—situate him at a properly intersectional literary history of mid-century Dublin, and he critiques the particular structure of systemic racism in 1930s and ’40s Ireland. Levy’s “decolonial cosmopolitanism” mounts a challenge to nationalist tendencies within the mainstay of Irish postcolonial thinking, a factor in his occlusion. His awkward poetics—wavering between a belated signature of the Harlem Renaissance and parodies of English sonnets and ballads—constitutes “mimicry” in Homi Bhabha’s sense—destabilizing white discourse with “flashes from the dark.”
    Item Type: Article
    Keywords: Ferdinand Levy; Irish poetry; race; decolonization; cosmopolitanism; Harlem Renaissance;
    Academic Unit: Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > English
    Item ID: 19136
    Identification Number: 10.2979/jml.00036
    Depositing User: Karl O'Hanlon
    Date Deposited: 31 Oct 2024 14:32
    Journal or Publication Title: Journal of Modern Literature
    Publisher: Indiana University Press
    Refereed: Yes
    Related URLs:
    URI: https://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/id/eprint/19136
    Use Licence: This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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