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    Tradition in Lorna Goodison's Work

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    ananda squire
    Lorna Goodison draws heavily on Jamaican tradition in her poetry. She references oral traditions like folktales, stories, and songs that have been passed down through generations. One example is her poem "Nanny" which pays tribute to the Jamaican hero Nanny of the Maroons through details from oral history. Goodison also incorporates peasant and religious traditions in her work. Her poem "Garden of the Woman Once Fallen" references the Jamaican tradition of using broom weeds for cleaning. She alludes to various religious rituals and symbols from traditions like Pocomania and Rastafarianism.

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    Tradition in Lorna Goodison's Work

    Uploaded by

    ananda squire
    120 views11 pages
    Lorna Goodison draws heavily on Jamaican tradition in her poetry. She references oral traditions like folktales, stories, and songs that have been passed down through generations. One example is her poem "Nanny" which pays tribute to the Jamaican hero Nanny of the Maroons through details from oral history. Goodison also incorporates peasant and religious traditions in her work. Her poem "Garden of the Woman Once Fallen" references the Jamaican tradition of using broom weeds for cleaning. She alludes to various religious rituals and symbols from traditions like Pocomania and Rastafarianism.

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    Lorna Goodison draws heavily on Jamaican tradition in her poetry. She references oral traditions like folktales, stories, and songs that have been passed down through generations. One example is her poem "Nanny" which pays tribute to the Jamaican hero Nanny of the Maroons through details from oral history. Goodison also incorporates peasant and religious traditions in her work. Her poem "Garden of the Woman Once Fallen" references the Jamaican tradition of using broom weeds for cleaning. She alludes to various religious rituals and symbols from traditions like Pocomania and Rastafarianism.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    120 views11 pages

    Tradition in Lorna Goodison's Work

    Uploaded by

    ananda squire
    Lorna Goodison draws heavily on Jamaican tradition in her poetry. She references oral traditions like folktales, stories, and songs that have been passed down through generations. One example is her poem "Nanny" which pays tribute to the Jamaican hero Nanny of the Maroons through details from oral history. Goodison also incorporates peasant and religious traditions in her work. Her poem "Garden of the Woman Once Fallen" references the Jamaican tradition of using broom weeds for cleaning. She alludes to various religious rituals and symbols from traditions like Pocomania and Rastafarianism.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 11

    Tradition in Lorna

    Goodison’s Work
    Presented by Ananda Squire & Ojea Sheckleford
    Our rich and varied cultural heritage,
    has a profound power to build our
    nation.

    —SOMEONE FAMOUS
    Overview

    A tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within a group


    or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with
    origins in the past. As such tradition includes, history, heritage
    and ancestry. Consciousness of the Caribbean and African
    heritage has been foremost in Goodison’s output and has
    produced among many others, poems of tribute – mainly to
    black women – poems of heritage, poems of ancestry, poems of
    history and poems of tradition.
    Oral Tradition/Folktale

    Hugh Hodges opens his “Start-Over: Possession Rites and Healing Rituals
    in the Poetry of Lorna Goodison” with a reference to an interview in which
    Frank Birbalsingh reminds the Jamaican poet that her poetry does not function as
    solution to the population’s suffering (Hodges 20). Through analyses of a large
    number of poems Hodges goes on to demonstrate how Goodison’s poems
    nevertheless “became or sought out rituals to restore hope,” and how this was
    done by drawing on Jamaican oral tradition as well as out of the conviction in the
    power of language. Storytelling and folktales are typical ways in the Afro-
    Caribbean context that traditions are passed on and upheld.
    Oral Tradition/Folktale

    Goodison draws on the wealth of Jamaica’s oral tradition on mentos, ring-tunes,


    revival hymns, and work songs, proverbs, and Anansi stories, and on the Jamaican
    traditions of street preaching and prophecy. Oral tradition can be seen in poems
    such as “Nanny”.
    “Nanny”

    This poem pays tribute to the Jamaican National Hero, Nanny of the Maroon, of
    whom not much is known. Many of what we know about her today has been
    passed down through oral traditions. Folklore has it that she could catch bullets
    and deflect them back at the enemy soldiers.
    Peasant Traditions

    These can be defined as traditions upheld by the lower class of a society often
    related to their lack of wealth and resourcefulness which it calls for.
    “Garden of the Woman Once Fallen”
    “ O weed powerless

    Your life devoted to sweeping, cleaning

    Even in your fullest blooming,”

    The symbolic use of the broom-weed is particularly apt. Not only is it rooted in
    Jamaican folk and peasant tradition; its use suggests at one and the same time
    material deprivation - those who can’t afford store-bought brooms have to use the
    broom weed for sweeping- and the value and significance of the despised and
    apparently insignificant- the lowly broom-weed is called upon to perform an
    important function.
    Religious Traditions / Rituals

    Goodison can be considered as an Omnist as she recognizes and respects all


    religions but doesn’t exactly subscribe to a particular one. She has a keen interest
    in studying religions and this becomes evident in her poetry, where a myriad of
    religious traditions and rituals are alluded to in her stanzas. Her poems are also
    sometimes laced with prophecies and preaching.
    Religious Traditions / Rituals

    According to Hugh Hodges, Lorna Goodison’s poetry has been concerned with
    finding or performing [religious] ceremonies that will both commemorate the past
    and engender the new possibilities for the future. Drawing on language and
    symbolism of Pocomania, revivalism, Pentecostalism and Rastafarianism. This
    was necessary to her as she came to poetic maturity during a period when political
    violence threatened to destroy Jamaica.
    “Heartease II”

    “ Set out a wash pan and catch mercy rain

    Forget bout drought, catch the mercy rain,

    Bathe and catch a light from this meteoric flame

    And sit down cleansed, to tell a rosary of your ancestor’s name”

    In this extract, the speaker tells readers to repent “catch a mercy rain” and to
    confess their sins “ tell a rosary of your ancestor’s name”.

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