French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

Gendered Violence And The Family: An Analysis Of The 14th-Century Epic "Lion De Bourges", Ashley Paige Holt

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is the first to focus on gender roles within the fourteenth-century French epic Lion de Bourges and the first work to feature extensive translations into English of this medieval text. Using the cyclical dismemberment and reunification of the Bourges family as a lens, it brings into focus the various members of the family, their relationships, and the larger thematic questions about family and society put forward by the poet. Chapter one interrogates the notion of the king as a national father figure as well as the spread of injury and violence from the father/king to the members of …

Writing Exclusionary Spaces: Myths, Tropes, And Stereotypes Surrounding The Roma In 19th- And 20th-Century French Literature, Jade Scottie Basford

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The “gypsy” figure has been popular in popular culture for hundreds of years – certainly since the 1600s. The figure can embody wanderlust, difference, bold sexuality, freedom, danger, and criminality. In 19th-century France, the figure’s trendiness was apparent in literature. Writers such as Victor Hugo, George Sand, Charles Nodier, and Prosper Mérimée profited from using these figures in writing. Most criticism of these works focuses on the origins of the tales or critical analyses of the narratives themselves. This research expands upon the extant scholarship to develop an overview of the usage of this figure as it moved throughout the …

"If They Don't Tell You, The Hair Will": Hair Narrative In Contemporary Women's Writing, Darina Pugacheva

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The history of colonial and racial oppression made hair stories and testimonials fundamental to understanding hair as a unifying element particular for women of African descent in the post-slavery era. Seen as such, their hair narrations provide the first-person perspective of their life experiences while at the same time inviting a critical investigation of colonial and racial oppression. Contemporary women writers develop these types of narrations into a special language of hair that helps them tell a story that is not apparent or straightforward. This literary device that uses hair to uncover deeper social and political issues is bound up …

The Child Ethnographer In The Field: Examples From English, Spanish, And French Caribbean Literature, Emily Ann O'Dell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation I consider the child to be an ethnographer in works of fiction and autofiction from the Caribbean islands. Through their liminality as culturally and developmentally betwixt or between, their cultural malleability, their linguistic fluidity, and their curiosity, the child becomes a "native" ethnographer who is capable of translating the culture (both linguistically and culturally) for the reader in order to establish understandings of Caribbean cultures. This is accomplished through the creation of hybridized or creolized texts that have many of the same characteristics as postmodern ethnographies.

In the English Caribbean Xuela provides an ethnographic perspective of Dominican …

Le Roman Policier Francophone : Entre Esthétique Et Politiques Du Genre En Afrique Et En Haïti, Lise Madeleine Mba Ekani

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, “Recasting Crime Fiction: The Francophone African and Haitian Crime Novel between Aesthetics and Politics”, investigates the social and literary meanings of the concept of politics as represented in African and Haitian crime novels. In this work, selected novels were examined considering their cultural, regional and linguistic particularities, as well as their perspectives on social criticism and politics. Drawing from fields such as sociocritical theory, philosophy, and history, this work allows for a more complex exploration of popular cultural productions while calling into question the literary genres. Consequently, it provides the opportunity to question cultural productions as an ideological …

In The Blood: Repressing Reproduction In The French Convent From Sanguinity To Sexuality, John Stanley Patin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project examines the French convent as a convergent point of evolving blood myths in the eighteenth century. According to Michel Foucault, as a society transitions from sovereign power to more liberal forms of government, the target of how power is enforced shifts as well: from the punishment of individuals who pose a threat to the crown to the regulation of perceived “deviants” who threaten the health and stability of the nation’s population. As the eighteenth century was a time of radical social change, the era encapsulates a prime moment for the study of continuities and discontinuities of these various …

Chambres Noires, Champ De Bataille : Analyse Des Rapports Interraciaux Dans La Chambre À Coucher Dans Les Romans Comment Faire L’Amour Avec Un Nègre Sans Se Fatiguer De Dany Laferrière, La Fin D’Un Primitif De Chester Himes, African Gigolo De Simon Njami, L’Impasse De Daniel Biyaoula Et Le Film Les Princes Noirs De Saint-Germain-Des-Près De Ben Diogaye Beye, Fabienne Marie-Dominique Kanor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The slave ship’s hold is the only place Black people put in chains can appropriate. There is no other place they can claim as their own since they know nothing of the New World to which they are being deported by force. A space where the memory of the native land quickly deteriorates, the hold becomes the main “home” with which the uprooted captives can identify. Therefore, it becomes a “lieu de mémoire”, a place that keeps traumatizing the descendants of people enslaved, to the point that it poisons the most intimate space of all: the bedroom. This dissertation is …

She Must Be Crazy: Alternative Realities In Contemporary Francophone Literature, Emily Barclay Spriggs, Emily Barclay Spriggs

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Globally and historically, madness appears as a prominent socio-medical concern that also occupies a significant space in literary tradition. There has been an increase in the number of scholars who study madness and literature in postcolonial works. However, the predominant view and treatment of madness – both socially and medically – adheres to the European, white male construct that has informed a more or less universal regard of those who suffer from mental woes: they are deranged, sick, ill. This poses a problem for postcolonial works when we consider the sexist and racist implications in psychology that were enhanced through …