Caryl Phillips and the Heroic

This article explores the notion of the heroic in fictional and non-fictional work by Black British writer Caryl Phillips. It uses an ambivalent Caribbean longing for heroes as a point of departure from which to discuss hero-theory and its applicability to the types of heroes found in Phillips' writing. It focuses in particular on The Final Passage (1985), Crossing the River (1993), The Atlantic Sound (2000), and A Distant Shore (2003) in its elaboration of the characteristics of a Phillipsian heroic and how and where to locate such figures. Qualities such as dignity, courage, no-saying, and global ways of being and seeing emerge as heroic traits, apparent also in Phillips' essays in A New World Order (2001) and Colour Me English (2011).