Green Waves and Wish Lines: Derek Walcott’s <em>Art Nouveau</em>

Roberta Cimarosti

doi:10.6092/issn.2611-0563/21919

Authors

Roberta Cimarosti Università della Calabria

She is a tenure-track researcher at the University of Calabria, Italy. Her research fields are: World Englishes and anglophone postcolonial Literature, translation studies, critical applied linguistics, and critical stylistics of nonfiction and literary texts. Publications include articles on cognitive poetics, English language literacy, counter discourse analysis of J.M. Coetzee’s essays and novels, Shakespeare’s plays and postcolonial rewritings, the theme of language and power and identity in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and contemporary multimodal rewritings, Édouard Glissant’s creolization and chaos theory, two monographs on Derek Walcott’s poetics.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/21919

Keywords:

Hokusai, Van Gogh, Walcott, Fashion, Art

Abstract

This article is about two poems and a play by Caribbean writer and painter Derek Walcott which, published at different stages of his career, engage with Hokusai’s print Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa and Van Gogh’s canvas The Starry Night, thereby indirectly opening the core issue of fashion ever: its relationship with art. This is because these two masterpieces have been part of fashion discourse since its start in the mid-19^th century when they too were created, to the present time, when swirling stars and cresting waves have become global icons worn and exhibited, cap-à-pie, in both haute couture and the mass clothing industry.

References

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Green Waves and Wish Lines: Derek Walcott’s Art Nouveau

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