Voicing Memory: History and Subjectivity in French Caribbean Literature (review)

2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 173-175
Author(s):  
H. Adlai Murdoch
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Caribbean Literature ◽  
French Caribbean ◽  
French Caribbean Literature

Joseph Zobel: Négritude and the Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Hardwick
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Black Identity ◽  
Caribbean Literature ◽  
Social Realism ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
French Caribbean ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Joseph Zobel ◽  
French Caribbean Literature

Joseph Zobel (1915-2006) is one of the best-known Francophone Caribbean authors, and is internationally recognized for his novel La Rue Cases-Nègres (1950). Yet very little is known about his other novels, and most readings of La Rue Cases-Nègres consider the text in isolation. Through a series of close readings of the author’s six published novels, with supporting references drawn from his published short stories, poetry and diaries, Joseph Zobel: Négritude and the Novel generates new insights into Zobel’s highly original decision to develop Négritude’s project of affirming pride in black identity through the novel and social realism. The study establishes how, influenced by the American Harlem Renaissance movement, Zobel expands the scope of Négritude by introducing new themes and stylistic innovations which herald a new kind of social realist French Caribbean literature. These discoveries in turn challenge and alter the current understanding of Francophone Caribbean literature during the Négritude period, in addition to contributing to changes in the current understanding of Caribbean and American literature more broadly understood.

The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Britton
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Caribbean Literature ◽  
French Caribbean ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Problematic Issue ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Caribbean Fiction ◽  
French Caribbean Literature

The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction seeks to better understand the concept of community as a central and problematic issue in French Caribbean literature. The study examines representations of community in seven French Caribbean novels, including Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée, Edouard Glissant’s Le Quatrième Siècle, Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, Vincent Placoly’s L’Eau-de-mort guildive, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, Daniel Maximin’s L’Ile et une nuit, and Maryse Condé’s Desirada. Each novel is discussed in chronological order, demonstrating a progressive move away from the ‘closed’ community towards a newer sense of an ‘open’ community. In this study, Britton offers an understanding of the postcolonial societies of the Caribbean by looking at French Caribbean literature’s role in the creation of community. The seven novels analysed reveal a correlation between a tightly knit, purposeful community and a linear narrative that ends in definitive resolution, and, conversely, between a dispersed or heterogeneous community and a narrative structure that avoids linearity and closure.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document