Authority and Misquotation in V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River

Abstract

This article studies Naipaul's transformation of classical and imperial language into the stylized prose of his novels. It identifies a piece of information not previously known about A Bend in the River--that the (mis) quotation from Virgil is in fact a (mis) quotation from the Trinidadian flag--and considers the implications of Naipaul's concealment of this fact