Rastafarianism and Pan-Africanism in the Caribbean (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 1998 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Salzburg, language: English, abstract: Writing a paper that is called "Rastafarianism And Pan-Africanism In The Caribbean" represents a great challenge to me. The two terms "Rastafarianism" and "Pan-Africanism" are widely unknown among Central Europeans and especially among native German speakers, and I had been no exception before I dealt extensively with this topic. Therefore, although this is a literary term paper, I will present historical, religious and sociological facts along with linguistic annotations as a basic background to my literary studies in order to inform the reader and give him a more or less detailed survey ON Rastafarian culture and society. I regard it as necessary to give short definitions of Rastafarianism and Pan-Africanism and their relations to one another in the beginning, for the simple reason that many readers will hardly ever have come across these two terms before, but I will keep them short, because everything will be discussed in detail further on, at the examples of literary texts. These literary texts will comprise mainly songs, because the main possibility of expression for Rastafarian spokesmen is their music - Reggae.