Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

Par-Delà Le Chaos : Aube Tranquille De Jean-Claude Fignolé, Lucienne J. Serrano

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article analyses how Fignolé’s book puts into words an unbearable state sprung from the chaos of slavery. This is an oxymoronic writing experience, because how can the unspeakable be named? Writing is not thought here, but rather a driving force digging into an intimate movement of rebellion and using language in a glib form, free from conscious meaning and logic, in order to reveal a preconscious meaning. The writer then becomes an archaeologist of pain. He tries to transcribe the scream in splintered space and time, so that memory finds landmarks once again. Writing thus becomes an experience aiming …

Folie De L'Écriture, Écriture De La Folie Dans La Littératureféminine Des Antilles Françaises, Pascale De Souza

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

There are many female characters with sick/mutilated bodies in Guadeloupe and Martinique’s female literature. Madness, anorexia, self-mutilation, even the suicide of these female characters not only denounce a repressive social order inherited from the history of slavery, but also represent means to affect a social environment that is not responsive to the female quest for identity. Madness, crisis or acts of self-mutilation allow them to escape (“marronnage”) a system, which tries to negate their very existence.

Le Goût Des Jeunes Filles De Dany Laferrière : Du Chaos À La Reconstruction Du Sens, Nathalie Courcy

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper analyses the way politics, society and the representation of speech is structured in Le goût des jeunes filles, Dany Laferrière’s fourth novel. How do the events told and the disorganised narration itself symbolise the unspeakable? Moreover, how does the characters’ speech rebuild the meaning of existence, and how does Laferrière see the future? Chaos, madness, all that overtakes or destroys the norm, anchors fiction in an attempt to reorganize reality and the imaginary.

Portrait: Les Nombreuses Facettes De Toussaint Louverture, Jean Metellus

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Toussaint Louverture's groundbreaking revolutionary war against slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue has earned him a well-deserved place in the history of anti-colonial movements. Despite his arrest and subsequent deportation to France, he is remembered as one of the founders of the first Haitian nation. Metellus goes beyond this image of the Haitian leader and captures him in all his complexity; his limits as a human being and as a leader. However, Metellus ultimately wants us to remember Toussaint Louverture as one of the founders of the anti­colonial movement.

Simone Schwarz-Bart : Quel Intérêt? Classer L’Inclassable, Christiane Ndiaye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Critics do not agree on what constitutes the interest of the works of Schwarz- Bart. However, four major tendencies are apparent in the many critical studies of her works: some are interested in the "creole experience" her novels are said to portray, others in the "feminine experience", while others again in the "mythological" dimension and the question of what is borrowed from oral literature. These different approches interpret the works of Schwarz-Bart essentially in the perspective of "testimony" and, even though there is a consensus as to the originality of her writing, there is little analysis of the specific techniques …

Rhétorique De La Réception Des Oeuvres Francophones Dans Présence Africaine, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article analyses the Reception discourse towards African and Caribbean Literatures in French. We will analyse some articles published in Présence africaine to show how this journal played a leading part in the promotion of African and Caribbean Literatures in French since its beginning in 1947 to now.

Réceptions De L’Oeuvre D’Émile Ollivier : De La Difficulté De Nommer L’Écrivain Migrant, Joubert Satyre

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Abstract: Who is a migrant writer? That’s the question asked by Québec institutions which legitimatize literature, including journalistic critics and scholars. The aim of our paper is to make an inventory of the terms employed by these institutions to name Émile Ollivier (1940-2002), an Haitian novelist who has been exiled in Québec since the mid-sixties. These terms reveal a discontent and vagueness in the attempt to link the novelist to a nationality or a country. Between appropriation and dismissal, this multiplicity symbolizes a resistance to frankly consider this writer as a Quebecer. We also refer to the "in-between" of all …

Enseigner La Littérature Francophone : À La Recherche De La Banalisation, Cilas Kemedjio

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The emergence of francophone literatures as a field that is increasingly taught in departments of French has led to the creation of numerous positions dedicated to this area. The natural question that specialists face is how to devise strategies to develop and entrench this new discipline in American universities, concerned as they are with budgetary issues. The present study argues that only the constant search for cooperation between Francophonie and related academic fields will facilitate its institutionalization.

Variations Sur La Langue De Molière; L’Enseignementdu Français Aux États-Unis, Thomas C. Spear

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

French has always been among the top foreign languages taught in the American university, even if Spanish occupies the first place. As a result of the social transformations of the 1960s and 1970s and the development of new fields of learning, changes were also introduced gradually into French department programs to include francophone literatures, although in a manner that some have deemed disturbing.

This openness, which is not found in France, has brought about the creation of new faculty positions, some of which are occupied by teachers and writers from Africa and the Caribbean who are making a significant contribution …

La « Littérature Francophone » En Question, Roberta Hatcher

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

While literatures from Africa, the Caribbean and Québec have been taught in U.S French programs since at least the 1970s, the widespread incorporation of «francophone» literature and culture into all levels of the curriculum is a relatively recent phenomenon. Yet the organization of these heterogeneous fields under the umbrella of Francophone Studies has generated little discussion concerning the field’s definition and its relation to French Studies as a whole. This essay examines the category of Francophone Literature, arguing that it is no longer adequate for understanding today’s complex literary and cultural terrain.