Le Roman Ivoirien Au Fėminin : Une Ėcriture Plurielle
ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: LE ROMAN IVOIRIEN AU FĖMININ : UNE ĖCRITURE PLURIELLE Gbadoua Viviane Uetto Békrou, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Dissertation directed by: Professor Eileen Julien Department of French and Italian Although they emerged in the late seventies, like their peers from other Francophone West African’s countries, Ivorian women writers are not well known on the literary scene with the exception of Véronique Tadjo, Tanella Boni, Régina Yaou. This situation, however, does not prevent literary critics from analyzing their works under the same prism as the fictional works published by African women writers at large. Despite the relative paucity of essays or articles which try to examine literature produced by Ivorian women from a different perspective, critics show little or no distinction between texts produced by African women whether Anglophone of Francophone. African women authors’ works are usually viewed as a counter-discourse to the male discourse, a vehicle to unveil their oppression/frustration, or an articulation of their rebellion against phallocentric societal practices. This dissertation examines the various ways in which certain fictional works by Ivorian women writers transcend issues solely relevant to women’s status and fate in modern or traditional Africa. The texts used for this study are the following: Tanella Boni’s Une vie de crabe (1994), Véronique Tadjo’s Le royaume aveugle (1984), Régina Yaou’s Ehui Anka ou le défi aux sorciers (1988) and Flore Azoumé’s Le crépuscule de l’homme (2003). The study is divided between two main parts consisting of three chapters each: In the first chapter of part I, a summary is given of the state of literary critique produced to date on the writing of Ivorian woman writers.
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