Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean by Hardwick, Louise;

Rövid leírás:

This book explores a major modern turn in Francophone Caribbean literature towards récits d’enfance (narratives of childhood) and asks why this occurred post-1990.

Hosszú leírás:

This book examines a major modern turn in Francophone Caribbean literature towards the récit d'enfance, or childhood memoir, and asks why this occurred post-1990, connecting texts to recent changes in public policy and education policy concerning the commemoration of slavery and colonialism both in France and at a global level (for example, the UNESCO project 'La Route de l'esclave', the 'loi Taubira' and the 'Comité pour la mémoire de l'esclavage').

Combining approaches from Postcolonial Theory, Psychoanalysis, Trauma Theory and Gender Studies, and positing recognition as a central concept of postcolonial literature, it draws attention to a neglected body of récits d'enfance by contemporary bestselling, prize-winning Francophone Caribbean authors Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Daniel Maximin, Raphaël Confiant and Dany Laferrière, while also offering new readings of texts by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Joseph Zobel, Françoise Ega, Michèle Lacrosil, Maurice Virassamy and Mayotte Capécia.

The study proposes an innovative methodological paradigm with which to read postcolonial childhoods in a comparative framework from areas as diverse as the Caribbean, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and particularly the Haitian diaspora in North America.

Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean is the first book-length study of a remarkable literary phenomenon that emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century in the French Antilles and Haiti - the autobiographical narrative. Louise Hardwick expertly analyses this relatively understudied genre which uses childhood narrative in as much a politically as an aesthetically subversive manner. Her clear, meticulous and informed study reveals the ways in which these narratives of childhood, driven by a devoir de mémoire, relate individual memory to collective identity. This is a welcome critical work that makes a major contribution to francophone as well as to postcolonial literary studies.

J. Michael Dash

Tartalomjegyzék:

• Acknowledgments


• Abbreviations


• Introduction: Childhood, Genre and the Scene of Recognition


• 1. The Emergence of a Tradition


• 2. Apples and Mimic Men: Patrick Chamoiseau&&&x2019;s 'Une Enfance cr&&&xE9;ole'


• 3. The Poetics of Ethnicity in Rapha&&&xEB;l Confiant&&&x2019;s 'Ravines du devant-jour' and 'Le Cahier de romances'


• 4. Alienation and Estrangement in Maryse Cond&&&xE9;&&&x2019;s 'Le C&&&x153;ur &&&xE0; rire et &&&xE0; pleurer'


• 5. Childhood, the Environment and Diaspora: Daniel Maximin&&&x2019;s 'Tu, c&&&x2019;est l&&&x2019;enfance' and Gis&&&xE8;le Pineau&&&x2019;s 'L&&&x2019;Exil selon Julia'


• 6. Thwarted Expectations? Stasis and Change in Haiti in Dany Laferri&&&xE8;re&&&x2019;s 'L&&&x2019;Odeur du caf&&&xE9;' and 'Le Charme des apr&&&xE8;s-midi sans fin'


• 7. Parental Paradigms and Gender Stereotypes


• Afterword


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index