Transatlanticism Now

Redemptive violence and stuttering across the Atlantic: The Who's “My Generation” and Herman Melville'sBilly Buddin historical perspective

“…57 The element of youthful ''naturalness'' in Billy Budd is likewise a reminder of the nineteenth-century ''transatlantic Romanticism'' that affected Melville, but which had a parallel in the back-and-forth cultural movements and ''invasions'' across the Atlantic after 1945. 58 Youth culture in the form of resistance and inarticulacy very much resonates with the career of rock 'n' roll bands like The Who in the second half of the twentieth century, but this has its precursors in post-Romantic works of the nineteenth century such as Billy Budd. Accordingly, it is not surprising that in recent decades Melville's last work, unknown in his own day, has come to ''exert an emotional and intellectual force attained by only a few works of art.''…”

Reading Toni Morrison Critically

“…9 This development, in which the Atlantic Ocean becomes an organizing concept, is said to have transpired '[i]n tandem with an expanded awareness of the histories of colonialism, slavery and nationality'. 10 Although Stevens identifies the recent upsurge of interest in transatlantic relations as concentrated on the years between 1500 and 1800, 'when cultures surrounding the Atlantic were most dramatically altered through their connections with each other', I would suggest that such a frame can also constructively inform analysis of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first-century writing, thinking and culture. 11 Indeed, in The Black Atlantic Gilroy ranges from discussion of earlier journeys, intellectual exchanges and narratives to a consideration of contemporary popular music and the fiction of Morrison and others, such as Charles Johnson, Sherley Anne Williams and David Bradley, who also treat the legacies of slavery.…”