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FROM MUSE TO MILITANT: FRANCOPHONE WOMEN NOVELISTS AND SURREALIST AESTHETICS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Mary Anne Harsh, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2008 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Danielle Marx-Scouras, Advisor Professor Karlis Racevskis ______________________________ Advisor Professor Sabra Webber French and Italian Graduate Program ABSTRACT In 1924, André Breton launched the Surrealist movement in France with his publication of Manifeste du surréalisme. He and his group of mostly male disciples, prompted by the horrors of World War I, searched for fresh formulas for depicting the bizarre and inhumane events of the era and for reviving the arts in Europe, notably by experimenting with innovative practices which included probing the unconscious mind. Women, if they had a role, were viewed as muses or performed only ancillary responsibilities in the movement. Their participation was usually in the graphic arts rather than in literature. However, in later generations, francophone women writers such as Joyce Mansour and Suzanne Césaire began to develop Surrealist strategies for enacting their own subjectivity and promoting their political agendas. Aside from casual mention, no critic has formally investigated the surreal practices of this sizeable company of francophone women authors. I examine the literary production of seven women from three geographic regions in order to document the enduring capacity of surrealist practice to express human experience in the postcolonial and postmodern era. From the Maghreb I analyze La Grotte éclatée by Yamina Mechakra and L'amour, la fantasia by Assia Djebar, and from Lebanon, L'Excisée by Evelyne Accad. These novelists represent mental and physical trauma and the fragmentation of male/female relationships in times of combat. Célanire, cou-coupé by Maryse Condé and ii Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle by Simone Schwarz-Bart illustrate how Antillean literature reflects the oral traditions, supernatural beliefs and the heterogeneous cultural inheritance of its peoples. Both Jovette Marchessault’s visionary novel, La mère des herbes, which draws upon her autotchonous heritage and lesbian orientation, and Anne Hébert’s transgressive Les Enfants du sabbat, poignantly sabotage the paternalistic domination of the English-speaking Canadian government and the Catholic Church which relegated women to the role of reproductive automatons. I also examine feminist collaborative writing in Quebec to understand how it kindled an intellectual revival and a sophisticated field of literature and literary criticism. This dissertation charts the evolution of francophone women’s involvement with Surrealism from its inception, when they played only the passive, objective role of Muse, to the middle of the Twentieth Century when women writers became active militants for equal rights while expanding the definition of surreal practice. iii Dedicated to Fred and Marian Roberson You always told me I could do “... anything I set my mind to.” Michael A. Harsh, my very patient husband Now you finally have your kids out of college. My daughter, Molly Harsh, and my son, Leo J. III The only regrets you’ll ever have are for the adventures you haven’t taken. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Danielle Marx-Scouras, for her fervor and fire, her zealous scholarship and her confidence and encouragement from the very beginning of this journey. She has unselfishly shared her excitement, her impeccable judgment and her animated personality with all of us fortunate enough to have worked with her. I wish to thank Professor Judith Mayne, who welcomed me to The Ohio State University ten years ago to begin my M.A. studies, in spite of my greying hair, and Professor Karlis Racevskis, who continued to reassure all of us “late bloomers” that we really did belong in academia. I am grateful to have come into contact with perspectives outside my field in classes taught by Professor Racevskis and Professor Sabra Webber and for their participation on my committee. I appreciate Professor John Conteh-Morgan’s and Professor Christiane Laeufer’s enthusiastic support in their classes and in the preparation of my minor fields of study. Professor Diane Birckbichler’s wisdom and counsel have widened my experience and encouraged me to integrate both sound practices and good humor into my teaching. I wish to thank my Department Chair, Rich Hebein, at Bowling Green State University and my colleagues for their encouragement while I completed my writing. My first Surrealism class—Jocelyn Atkins, Cullen Colapietro, Teresa Eyler, Donna v Figura, Naomi García, Hannah Neville and Ashley Rearick—have expanded my horizons and helped me to fine-tune my conclusions. Finally, I thank my colleague, Oniankpo Akindjo, for a thousand kindnesses. vi VITA December 27, 1946 . Born – Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA 2000 . M.A. French, The Ohio State University 1999 – 2001 . Graduate Research & Teaching Assistant The Ohio State University 2001 – 2004 . Assistant Director French Individualized Instruction Center The Ohio State University 2004 – 2005 . Visiting Instructor of French Saint Michael’s College Colchester, Vermont 2005 – 2006 . Graduate Teaching Assistant The Ohio State University 2007 – Present . Visiting Instructor of French Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, Ohio PUBLICATIONS Research Publication 1. "The Grotesque and the Carnivalesque in Roch Carrier's La Guerre, Yes sir!: A Twentieth-Century Narrative with Renaissance Echoes." Interdisciplinary and Cross- Cultural Works in North America, eds. Mark Anderson and Rita Blayer. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, February 2005. 2. Book Review of Valérie Orlando's Of Suffocated Hearts and Tortured Souls. Research in African Literatures, (Autumn 2004). vii 3. Book Review of Mildred Mortimer's Maghrebian Mosiac: A Literature in Transition. Research in African Literatures 34.2 (Summer 2003). 4. Online Learning Packets to accompany Invitation au monde francophone to be used by instructors and students in levels 101.51-103.51 in the French Individualized Instruction program at the Ohio State University. (Jarvis, Gilbert A. and Thérèse M. Bonin and Diane Birckbichler. Invitation au monde francophone, 5th ed. Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2000.) Module 6, Chapter 7: "Le temps passe." Module 7, Chapter 8: "La Pluie et le beau temps" Module 8, Chapter 9: "Le monde du travail" Module 9, Chapter 10: "On fait des achats" Module 10, Chapter 11: "Être bien dans sa peau" Module 11, Chapter 12: "Des goûts et des couleurs" Module 12, Chapter 13: "Le passé et les souvenirs" Module 13, Chapter 14: "Le monde d'aujourd'hui et de demain" Module 14, Chapter 15: "Les arts et la vie" 5. Online Learning Packets to accompany Bravo! Communication, Grammaire, Culture et Littérature to be used by instructors and students in level 104.51 in the French Individualized Instruction program at the Ohio State University. (Muyskens, Judith A., Linda L. Harlow, Michèle Vialet, and Jean-François Brière. Bravo! Communication, Grammaire, Culture et Littérature, 4th. ed. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2001.) Module 16a, Chapter 1: "Heureux de faire votre connaissance" Module 16b, Chapter 2: "Je t’invite" Module 17, Chapter 3: "Qui suis-je?" FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field : French viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract . ii Dedication . iv Acknowledgments . v Vita . vii Chapters: 1. The Fathers and (M)Others of Surrealism . .1 A Political and artistic revolution: Surrealistic practices . 8 Automatic writing and dream transcription . .11 Collective and collaborative experimentation . 14 Shocking the public . 15 Genre boundaries, the marvelous: Visual and textual . 17 Shell shock, insanity and altered consciousness . 19 Eroticism and the woman as Muse . 21 Outside the Hexagon . 24 2. Nightmares of War and Dreams of Peace: Traumatized Subjects in the Maghreb and the Mashrek . 33 Introduction to the Maghreb and Mashrek . 33 Yamina Mechraka and La Grotte éclatée . 43 Assia Djebar and L’Amour, la fantasia .. 45 Evelyne Accad and L’Excisée . 50 Surrealist Practices for Mechakra, Djebar and Accad . 52 The Capacity of the written word to “translate” trauma . 53 Trauma writing and history in L’Amour, la fantasia . 69 Civil and Family War in Lebanon: Evelyne Accad & L’Excisée . 80 Psychoses, textual fragmentation and genre irregularities . 84 A Novel and much more . 85 French newpaper accounts, letters, theater: Djebar’s history . 91 The severed hand . 99 Accad’s genre irregularities . .103 ix The French language subverted and elaborated . 112 3. Resistance to DOM(ination): Maryse Condé’s and Simone Schwarz-Bart’s magical (Sur)realism and traditional culture in the Caribbean . 114 Geography, history and language in the Caribbean . .114 The DOM’s resistance to colonialism and neo-colonialism . 117 Négritude and Surrealism in the Caribbean . .117 Valorizing orality, writing literature . 127 Maryse Condé: Writer, teacher, critic, storyteller . 128 Condé and Célanire, cou-coupé . 134 Simone Schwarz-Bart: Ethnographer and novelist . 136 Schwarz-Bart and Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle . 138 Folk proverbs and oral tradition . 141 Proverbs and storytelling in Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle . 145 Folk language and storytelling in Célanire, cou-coupé . 151 Superstition, folk religion and the occult . 159 Condé’s linguistic treatment of the occult . 160 Simone Schwarz-Bart and the occult . 164 The (DOM)inated