Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967): a Play Bridging Cultures Together and a Precursor of Caribbean Créolité Poetics

Dream on Monkey Mountain (1967) which is considered one of Derek Walcott’s theatrical masterpieces is the model par excellence defined as “mulatto style,” where different theatrical methods and experiences merge. The play was inspired by places and people known to the author since his childhood spent in the Caribbean. The influence of Nō and Kabuki theatre is also recognizable in the drama. There are also references to the history of the Gospel, to texts by Georg Büchner and August Strindberg, Miguel de Cervantes or the early theatre of Federico García Lorca, while the main character recalls Peer Gynt (1867) by Henrik Ibsen or The Emperor Jones (1920) by Eugene O’Neill. The article analyses to what extent Walcott’s play illuminated the publication of Éloge de la créolité (1989), a manifesto written almost 20 years later by three Martinican authors, Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphäel Confiant, and which greatly contributed to the international dissemination of the concept of Créole and creolization. The analysis allows to extend the idea of créolité to the Walcottian corpus.