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Comparing Modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Literature, 1950S

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Comparing Modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Literature, 1950S Caribbean Connections: Comparing Modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean Literature, 1950s - Present Angela Brüning Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy English Studies and French Studies, School of Languages, Cultures and Religions University of Stirling May 2006 Acknowledgements and Declaration I am grateful to my supervisors Dr. David Murphy and Dr. James Procter for their detailed comments and critical insights in the revision of this thesis and for their unreserved faith in this project. I am grateful to both of them for their close co-operation in supervising this thesis and for having made me think about my work from different, new perspectives. My gratitude also to Prof Angela Smith for having been a mentor throughout the different stages of my research. Special thanks to Dr. Fiona Darroch, Dr. Corinne Fowler and Dr. Patricia Krus for their generosity with their time, for having shared their ideas with me and for having made me reflect on my argument. I am obliged to Dr. Dale Townshend for his critical advice and moral support and to Dr. Andreas Rahmatian for his encouragement. My thanks to my colleagues in the Department of English Studies and the School of Languages, Cultures and Religions for their understanding and for having contributed to a pleasant and stimulating postgraduate community and working atmosphere. Thanks also to the members of staff in these Departments for their help on the administrative side. I would like to thank Andrew Monteith and Oron Joffe for their technical support. I am grateful to Moira Stewart for her time and understanding. I wish to thank a number of treasured friends for their time we spent together as well as for their support of my project. Thanks, among others, to Beatriz Caballero Rodriguez, Valentina Colón, Dr. Maggie Magor, Dr. Isaac Tabner, Rikke Christoffersen, Binder Kaur, Dr. Mark Boydell, Dr. Fiona and Nat Chalamanda, Dr. Phia Steyn, Saumya Sharma-Meier as well as my friends in Germany and overseas. I am indebted to my family, especially to my sister and my parents, for their continuous and unfailing support and encouragement throughout my work on this thesis and for reminding me that there are more important things in life than writing a thesis. I am ii grateful to them for their patience during my emotional outbursts at the various frustrating moments of writing and for having always been only a phone call away from Stirling. iii Abstract In this thesis I investigate connections between modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction between the 1950s and the present. My study brings into focus literary representations of inter-related histories and cultures and problematises the fragmentation of Caribbean studies into separate academic disciplines. The disciplinary compartmentalisation of Caribbean studies into English studies on the one hand and French and Francophone studies on the other has contributed to a reading of Caribbean literature within separate linguistic spheres. This division is strikingly reflected in the scarcity of any sustained literary criticism that acknowledges cultural and literary interpenetration within the archipelago. My comparative study of selected Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction allows me to account for the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and historical diversity of Caribbean societies while, at the same time, foregrounding their inter-relatedness. Through a series of specific case studies the thesis illuminates ways in which theoretical concepts and literary tropes have travelled within the archipelago. Through a close reading of selected narrative fiction I will contextualise and analyse significant underlying linguistic, ethnic and cultural links between the various Caribbean societies which are largely based on the shared history of slavery, colonialism and decolonisation processes. The themes of migration, transformation and creolisation will be at the centre of my investigation. Chapter One establishes the historical and literary-critical framework for this thesis by engaging with key developments in Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean writing from the 1920s until the present. My comparison of the most influential trends in both Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature and criticism from the discourse of négritude to postcolonial studies seeks to highlight connections between these two linguistically divided fields of study. The analysis of Caribbean fiction in Chapters Two to Four pursues such theoretical, stylistic and thematic links further. Chapter Two iv challenges the conception of postwar Antillean and West Indian writing produced in the metropolis as distinct literary canons by drawing attention to thematic connections between the two traditions. Through the comparison of The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon and La Fête à Paris by Joseph Zobel it argues that these continuities represent a wider trend in ‘black European’ writing. Chapter Three examines concepts of cultural identity which have been central to Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature and criticism during the last two decades. Specifically it focuses on the notions of hybridity, créolité/creoleness and créolisation/creolisation which it discusses in relation to Robert Antoni’s novel Divina Trace and Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco. The final chapter focuses on Shani Mootoo’s and Gisèle Pineau’s representations of specific female experiences of trauma which are related to reiterated colonial violence. Their fictional portrayal of suppressed memories can be read in light of recent critical debates about a collective remembrance of the history of slavery and colonialism. v Contents Acknowledgements and Declaration ................................................................................ii Abstract............................................................................................................................iv Contents ...........................................................................................................................vi Introduction....................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One .................................................................................................................... 20 Comparison of Literary Discourses in the Anglophone and the Francophone Caribbean, 1920s until the Present ............................................................................. 20 Chapter Two ................................................................................................................... 75 ‘Black Metropolises’: Anglophone and Francophone Caribbeans in Mid-Twentieth Century London and Paris .......................................................................................... 75 Chapter Three ............................................................................................................... 135 The Representation of Creolisation in Divina Trace by Robert Antoni and Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau .................................................................................................. 135 Chapter Four ................................................................................................................. 201 Uncovering Trauma in Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night and Gisèle Pineau’s L’Espérance-macadam ............................................................................................. 201 vi Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 261 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 274 Primary Texts............................................................................................................ 274 Criticism.................................................................................................................... 281 Newspaper Articles................................................................................................... 312 Journals and Newspapers.......................................................................................... 313 Videos ....................................................................................................................... 315 vii Introduction This thesis examines connections between modern Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean fiction between the 1950s and the present. Central to my interdisciplinary, comparative reading of Caribbean writing is the investigation of literary representations of overlapping histories and inter-related cultures which are arbitrarily separated by current academic subjects.1 The disciplinary compartmentalisation of Caribbean studies into English studies on the one hand and French and Francophone studies on the other has led to the absence of any sustained literary criticism that acknowledges cultural and literary interpenetration within the archipelago. My comparative approach allows me to account for the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and historical diversity of Caribbean societies while, at the same time, highlighting their inter-relatedness. Throughout my thesis I will argue that a comparative reading of Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean literature illuminates the extent to which theoretical concepts and literary tropes have travelled within the archipelago. A comparison of Anglophone and Francophone representations of dominant tropes such as migration, the re-writing
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