Emmanuel Appadocca : Paternity in Trinidad and the Romantic Legacy

Abstract: Michel Maxwell Philip's pioneering Trinidadian novel Emmanuel Appadocca, or Blighted Life: A Tale of the Boucaneers (1854) explores the relations of multiracial son to white father in the aftermath of the legal abolition of slavery. Philip reshapes the legacy of British Romanticism to underscore and criticize its treatment of race, especially in the work of Lord Byron and Mary Shelley. Philip creates a novel that expresses the fury of a multiracial son at the racist neglect of his white father and dramatizes how colonialism continues to thwart the potential of Trinidad's multiracial population.