‘Weak’ Encounters: Walcott’s Refiguring of Crusoe in “The Castaway”, “Crusoe’s Island”, and “Crusoe’s Journal”

Abstract

This article examines three poems by Derek Walcott on Robinson Crusoe: “The Castaway”, “Crusoe’s Island”, and “Crusoe’s Journal”. The three texts are interpreted as an implicit sequence which, starting from the critique of the strong identitarianism of the white coloniser and of the black nativist poet, produces a ‘weak’ version of Caribbean identity based on the dialogic synthesis of nature and culture, matter and discourse, the beauty of Western poetry as finally represented by Dante’s language and the physical splendour of Tobago’s black girls.