The Poetics of Empire: A Study of James Grainger's The Sugar Cane

First published in 1764, The Sugar-Cane is a major work in the history of Anglophone Caribbean literature. It is the only poem written in the Caribbean before the Twentieth Century to achieve a place in the Western 'canon'. Grainger sought to interpret his personal experience of the Caribbean through his wide and deep reading in literature, from the Greeks to Milton. Grainger wrote a 'West India Georgic', challenging assumptions about poetic diction and the proper subject matter of poetry, and boldly asserting the importance of the Caribbean to the Eighteenth Century British empire.. This is the first reliable text and critical study of the poem, setting it within the context of Grainger's life and work.