In Europe's Image - The Need for American Multiculturalism

Dathorne's approach is basically literary and historical, but he has also developed his argument around politics, popular culture, language, and even landscape architecture. He looks at Europe as a mental construct of philosophies and politics that both the English and European Americans identified with Greece and Rome. Dathorne shows how much of what we think of as European heritage is actually of African and/or Islamic background. He shows the founders of the U.S. to be idealistic Athenian-type elites, unlikely to allow humanity to govern as a citizenship. The book discusses the literary history of the ex-colony of America with its own special lens, showing how again and again the makers of the American myth failed to come to terms with the multicultural realities.

List of contents

Search for the Classic Past
European Mythologies in America
New Haven Africans and New England Transcendentalists
Black Leadership and Eurocentric Ideals
Imperialism and Immigration
Eurocentrism versus Ethnocentrism
European Visitors to the United States
American Writers in Europe
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the author

O. R. DATHORNE is Professor of English at the University of Kentucky and founder and director of the Association of Caribbean Studies. A native of Guyana, Dathorne represents a postcolonialist viewpoint, marginalized by majority discourse. He has taught at four African universities and five American universities, including Yale. He is a prolific novelist and poet and the author of more than fifteen books, including The Black Mind (1974), Dark Ancestor (1981), Dele's Child (1986), In Europe's Image (Bergin & Garvey, 1994) and Imagining the World (Bergin & Garvey, 1994).

Product details

• Authors: O. Dathorne, O. R. Dathorne
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 26.10.1994
• EAN: 9780897893978
• ISBN: 978-0-89789-397-8
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); USA, Europe, Cultural Studies, POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory, PHILOSOPHY / History & Surveys / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, POLITICAL SCIENCE / World / European, Political science & theory, United States of America, USA, Political science and theory, Philosophical traditions and schools of thought, History of Western philosophy, Non-Western philosophy, Geography and World Cultures: Culture