Bonnie Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496810557
- eISBN:
- 9781496810595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496810557.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter focuses on the ways in which Maryse Condé’s autofictional narratives engage with questions of history and memory, particularly the notion that self-knowledge achieved by filling in the ...
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This chapter focuses on the ways in which Maryse Condé’s autofictional narratives engage with questions of history and memory, particularly the notion that self-knowledge achieved by filling in the gaps of her personal history is a means to create connections and reconcile with the past. The term herstory is more appropriate in this context given Condé’s attention to understanding her female lineage and her roles as mother, lover and writer. The discussion centers on: Le Coeur à rire et à pleurer: contes vrais de mon enfance [Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood], Victoire, les saveurs et les mots [Victoire: My Mother’s Mother] and La Vie sans fards. These three narratives have been chosen for their illuminating demonstration of the continuous interchange that exists between the personal and the historical as well as Condé’s emphasis on the importance of connecting histories within one’s own family and with her literary forebears.Less
This chapter focuses on the ways in which Maryse Condé’s autofictional narratives engage with questions of history and memory, particularly the notion that self-knowledge achieved by filling in the gaps of her personal history is a means to create connections and reconcile with the past. The term herstory is more appropriate in this context given Condé’s attention to understanding her female lineage and her roles as mother, lover and writer. The discussion centers on: Le Coeur à rire et à pleurer: contes vrais de mon enfance [Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood], Victoire, les saveurs et les mots [Victoire: My Mother’s Mother] and La Vie sans fards. These three narratives have been chosen for their illuminating demonstration of the continuous interchange that exists between the personal and the historical as well as Condé’s emphasis on the importance of connecting histories within one’s own family and with her literary forebears.
Eva Sansavior
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846317453
- eISBN:
- 9781846317187
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317187.006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
One of the distinguishing, and also critically overlooked, features of Guadeloupian female author, Maryse Condé's work has been the significant number of interviews she has given in various media in ...
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One of the distinguishing, and also critically overlooked, features of Guadeloupian female author, Maryse Condé's work has been the significant number of interviews she has given in various media in both the United States and France. This chapter discusses Maryse Condé's interviews. It considers the mobile sets of representations that she makes of the Guadeloupian, French, and North American fields of reception, drawing out the relationships between literature and criticism, the author, her fiction, and her readers that are constructed in the interviews.Less
One of the distinguishing, and also critically overlooked, features of Guadeloupian female author, Maryse Condé's work has been the significant number of interviews she has given in various media in both the United States and France. This chapter discusses Maryse Condé's interviews. It considers the mobile sets of representations that she makes of the Guadeloupian, French, and North American fields of reception, drawing out the relationships between literature and criticism, the author, her fiction, and her readers that are constructed in the interviews.
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311437
- eISBN:
- 9781846315299
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846311437.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter explores the foundational bias (nomos) of postcolonial studies and its anxiously undertheorized relation to the empirical question of popularity and the ideological stakes that question ...
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This chapter explores the foundational bias (nomos) of postcolonial studies and its anxiously undertheorized relation to the empirical question of popularity and the ideological stakes that question raises. It elaborates, in a specifically francophone context, upon the opposition between the postcolonial and the popular, smoking out the bias toward great, or at least not bad, writing in postcolonial studies by briefly examining the case of popular novelist, Tony Delsham. It then discusses Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé by way of expanding upon the distinction between the low-, the middle-, and the highbrow, and arguing for its unacknowledged importance to academic readers of postcolonial texts. The chapter concludes with some general considerations regarding what, if anything, cultural studies, with its concerted focus on the ‘popular’, can contribute to our understanding of postcolonial studies and indeed, to that field's self-understanding.Less
This chapter explores the foundational bias (nomos) of postcolonial studies and its anxiously undertheorized relation to the empirical question of popularity and the ideological stakes that question raises. It elaborates, in a specifically francophone context, upon the opposition between the postcolonial and the popular, smoking out the bias toward great, or at least not bad, writing in postcolonial studies by briefly examining the case of popular novelist, Tony Delsham. It then discusses Guadeloupean novelist Maryse Condé by way of expanding upon the distinction between the low-, the middle-, and the highbrow, and arguing for its unacknowledged importance to academic readers of postcolonial texts. The chapter concludes with some general considerations regarding what, if anything, cultural studies, with its concerted focus on the ‘popular’, can contribute to our understanding of postcolonial studies and indeed, to that field's self-understanding.
Kathryn Lachman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380307
- eISBN:
- 9781781387290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380307.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Critics have classified African and Caribbean novels as “polyphonic” with little consideration of what precisely this entails. This chapter puts forth a more precise definition of polyphony by ...
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Critics have classified African and Caribbean novels as “polyphonic” with little consideration of what precisely this entails. This chapter puts forth a more precise definition of polyphony by reading Maryse Condé's canonical novel, Traversée de la mangrove [Crossing the Mangrove], against leading theorists of literary polyphony, Mikhail Bakhtin and Milan Kundera. Because it takes the form of a ritual wake and features multiple narrators, critics have widely hailed Condé's novel as an exemplary instance of polyphonic writing. On closer examination, however, the novel challenges a common misperception about literary polyphony, namely the idea that a written text can approximate oral culture and give voice to disenfranchised subjects. This reading attends to the distinct levels of narration at work in Condé's novel to show how the text creates a false impression of intimacy and community, while maintaining an aesthetic of opacity. The chapter assesses the aesthetic strategies and ethical priorities of Condé's writing against those of other major Caribbean writers: Césaire, Glissant, and Chamoiseau. It argues that the uncritical use of the term “polyphony” in relation to Condé's fiction (and that of other authors from the Global South) has obscured our understanding of ethics and representation, and muted the social critique present in many of these texts.Less
Critics have classified African and Caribbean novels as “polyphonic” with little consideration of what precisely this entails. This chapter puts forth a more precise definition of polyphony by reading Maryse Condé's canonical novel, Traversée de la mangrove [Crossing the Mangrove], against leading theorists of literary polyphony, Mikhail Bakhtin and Milan Kundera. Because it takes the form of a ritual wake and features multiple narrators, critics have widely hailed Condé's novel as an exemplary instance of polyphonic writing. On closer examination, however, the novel challenges a common misperception about literary polyphony, namely the idea that a written text can approximate oral culture and give voice to disenfranchised subjects. This reading attends to the distinct levels of narration at work in Condé's novel to show how the text creates a false impression of intimacy and community, while maintaining an aesthetic of opacity. The chapter assesses the aesthetic strategies and ethical priorities of Condé's writing against those of other major Caribbean writers: Césaire, Glissant, and Chamoiseau. It argues that the uncritical use of the term “polyphony” in relation to Condé's fiction (and that of other authors from the Global South) has obscured our understanding of ethics and representation, and muted the social critique present in many of these texts.
Nick Nesbit
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318665
- eISBN:
- 9781846317934
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318665.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Surveys the critical writings of Maryse Condé, from her early analyses of Césaire's cahier d’un retour au pays natal, to later essays on Créolité, Antillean women writers, and Antillean oral ...
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Surveys the critical writings of Maryse Condé, from her early analyses of Césaire's cahier d’un retour au pays natal, to later essays on Créolité, Antillean women writers, and Antillean oral literature. Focuses on her critique of Antillean alienation and women's writing.Less
Surveys the critical writings of Maryse Condé, from her early analyses of Césaire's cahier d’un retour au pays natal, to later essays on Créolité, Antillean women writers, and Antillean oral literature. Focuses on her critique of Antillean alienation and women's writing.
Eva Sansavior
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381519
- eISBN:
- 9781781384923
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381519.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This chapter examines the cultural history of globalization by focusing on the genre of the essay as a site of paradoxical trans-historical and transcultural encounters. Reading against the grain of ...
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This chapter examines the cultural history of globalization by focusing on the genre of the essay as a site of paradoxical trans-historical and transcultural encounters. Reading against the grain of traditional disciplinary divisions, it considers the emergence of globalization from the sixteenth century to the present day in the rhetorical strategies of two essays: Michel de Montaigne’s ‘Des Cannibales’ and Maryse Condé’s ‘O Brave New World’. It analyses the staging of the various literal and metaphorical encounters in both essays and compares the uses made of ideas of ‘cultural tradition’ and ‘Utopia’. It explains how the essay can be employed as a privileged site for rethinking the cultural and structural relations that have historically defined the phenomenon of globalization.Less
This chapter examines the cultural history of globalization by focusing on the genre of the essay as a site of paradoxical trans-historical and transcultural encounters. Reading against the grain of traditional disciplinary divisions, it considers the emergence of globalization from the sixteenth century to the present day in the rhetorical strategies of two essays: Michel de Montaigne’s ‘Des Cannibales’ and Maryse Condé’s ‘O Brave New World’. It analyses the staging of the various literal and metaphorical encounters in both essays and compares the uses made of ideas of ‘cultural tradition’ and ‘Utopia’. It explains how the essay can be employed as a privileged site for rethinking the cultural and structural relations that have historically defined the phenomenon of globalization.
Typhaine Leservot
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846310546
- eISBN:
- 9781846319808
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846319808.003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Born in 1937 in Guadeloupe, Maryse Condé was sent by her parents to pursue her studies in France at the age of sixteen. She earned her BA in English and Classical Literatures from the Sorbonne in ...
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Born in 1937 in Guadeloupe, Maryse Condé was sent by her parents to pursue her studies in France at the age of sixteen. She earned her BA in English and Classical Literatures from the Sorbonne in Paris, married African actor Mamadou Condé in 1959, and moved to Africa a year later. Condé came back to France in 1973, completed her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in 1975, and moved to the United States in the late 1980s. Her oeuvre spans almost forty years and includes novels, short stories, critical essays, and plays. In 1993, Condé became the first Francophone Caribbean writer to receive the Puterbaugh Prize. Her work can be characterised as a sustained and insightful exploration of Caribbean identity and, in particular, négritude, antillanité, and créolité. The quest to define Caribbean identity is a common feature of twentieth-century Caribbean literature. Condé's fiction and essays now occupy a central place in Francophone postcolonial studies and contribute to postcolonial theory and postcolonial thought by consistently criticising its dogmatic approach to race, ethnicity, gender, culture, and history.Less
Born in 1937 in Guadeloupe, Maryse Condé was sent by her parents to pursue her studies in France at the age of sixteen. She earned her BA in English and Classical Literatures from the Sorbonne in Paris, married African actor Mamadou Condé in 1959, and moved to Africa a year later. Condé came back to France in 1973, completed her doctorate in comparative literature at the Sorbonne in 1975, and moved to the United States in the late 1980s. Her oeuvre spans almost forty years and includes novels, short stories, critical essays, and plays. In 1993, Condé became the first Francophone Caribbean writer to receive the Puterbaugh Prize. Her work can be characterised as a sustained and insightful exploration of Caribbean identity and, in particular, négritude, antillanité, and créolité. The quest to define Caribbean identity is a common feature of twentieth-century Caribbean literature. Condé's fiction and essays now occupy a central place in Francophone postcolonial studies and contribute to postcolonial theory and postcolonial thought by consistently criticising its dogmatic approach to race, ethnicity, gender, culture, and history.
Jason Herbeck
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781786940391
- eISBN:
- 9781786944948
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781786940391.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
As a means of illustrating the central albeit conflicted place that issues of authenticity occupy in the French Caribbean, Chapter 3 examines Guadeloupean Maryse Condé’s canonical novel, Traversée de ...
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As a means of illustrating the central albeit conflicted place that issues of authenticity occupy in the French Caribbean, Chapter 3 examines Guadeloupean Maryse Condé’s canonical novel, Traversée de la Mangrove (1989). Consideration of the somewhat heated discussion of Caribbean authenticity prompted by Patrick Chamoiseau’s public reading of Condé’s novel, in evidencing the authors’ stark differences of opinion on the matter, also serves to further inform the fundamentally identitarian dilemmas surrounding the construction of French-Caribbean expression. Subsequent close textual analysis of Traversée de la Mangrove on two distinct architextual and architectural levels illustrates how issues of authenticity are divulged and addressed in the text. Additional consideration of the novel’s architextual properties—in particular with respect to Haitian Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la Rosée (1944)—leads, in conclusion, to an examination of the architectural significance of the house that Condé’s main character inhabits and in which he undertakes the (metatextual) project of writing a novel entitled Traversée de la Mangrove.Less
As a means of illustrating the central albeit conflicted place that issues of authenticity occupy in the French Caribbean, Chapter 3 examines Guadeloupean Maryse Condé’s canonical novel, Traversée de la Mangrove (1989). Consideration of the somewhat heated discussion of Caribbean authenticity prompted by Patrick Chamoiseau’s public reading of Condé’s novel, in evidencing the authors’ stark differences of opinion on the matter, also serves to further inform the fundamentally identitarian dilemmas surrounding the construction of French-Caribbean expression. Subsequent close textual analysis of Traversée de la Mangrove on two distinct architextual and architectural levels illustrates how issues of authenticity are divulged and addressed in the text. Additional consideration of the novel’s architextual properties—in particular with respect to Haitian Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la Rosée (1944)—leads, in conclusion, to an examination of the architectural significance of the house that Condé’s main character inhabits and in which he undertakes the (metatextual) project of writing a novel entitled Traversée de la Mangrove.
Celia Britton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781781380369
- eISBN:
- 9781781387214
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380369.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Condé's ironic realism, her deflation of stereotypes, operates not only in the themes of her novels but also on the stylistic level of paragraphs and sentences. By breaking the rules of conventional ...
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Condé's ironic realism, her deflation of stereotypes, operates not only in the themes of her novels but also on the stylistic level of paragraphs and sentences. By breaking the rules of conventional literary style, her ‘skidding’ and ‘looping’ sentences undermine the stereotypical hierarchies of importance that structure our understanding of social reality. This chapter analyses her style in terms of Barthes’ structuralist theory of literary meaning as an integrated, coherent hierarchy of levels, and his later concept of the codes that structure the realist text and thus reinforce the ideology that underpins it. For Barthes, only anti-realist literature can overturn the codes and subvert the ideology; but Condé's writing achieves the same result in a novel that remains entirely realist and thus impacts on our experience of the real world.Less
Condé's ironic realism, her deflation of stereotypes, operates not only in the themes of her novels but also on the stylistic level of paragraphs and sentences. By breaking the rules of conventional literary style, her ‘skidding’ and ‘looping’ sentences undermine the stereotypical hierarchies of importance that structure our understanding of social reality. This chapter analyses her style in terms of Barthes’ structuralist theory of literary meaning as an integrated, coherent hierarchy of levels, and his later concept of the codes that structure the realist text and thus reinforce the ideology that underpins it. For Barthes, only anti-realist literature can overturn the codes and subvert the ideology; but Condé's writing achieves the same result in a novel that remains entirely realist and thus impacts on our experience of the real world.
Celia Britton
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846317538
- eISBN:
- 9781846317200
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846317200.013
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines William Faulkner's theme of ancestral crime and his influence on two Caribbean novels: Édouard Glissant's Le Quatrième Siécle (1964) and Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove ...
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This chapter examines William Faulkner's theme of ancestral crime and his influence on two Caribbean novels: Édouard Glissant's Le Quatrième Siécle (1964) and Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove (1989). Glissant sees Faulkner's novels as showing the impossibility of founding a pure lineage. In Le Quatrième Siécle, Glissant reworks Faulkner's interest with ancestral crime or the ‘original sin’ that has to do with the foundation of a lineage. Condé's allusions to Faulknerian themes differ from Glissant's in the sense that she is not at all interested in the idea of founding a lineage: the hidden crimes in her case are not original but are ancestral.Less
This chapter examines William Faulkner's theme of ancestral crime and his influence on two Caribbean novels: Édouard Glissant's Le Quatrième Siécle (1964) and Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove (1989). Glissant sees Faulkner's novels as showing the impossibility of founding a pure lineage. In Le Quatrième Siécle, Glissant reworks Faulkner's interest with ancestral crime or the ‘original sin’ that has to do with the foundation of a lineage. Condé's allusions to Faulknerian themes differ from Glissant's in the sense that she is not at all interested in the idea of founding a lineage: the hidden crimes in her case are not original but are ancestral.
Njeri Githire
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038785
- eISBN:
- 9780252096747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038785.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter examines the juxtaposition of cannibalism and sexual appetites in Maryse Condé's Histoire de la femme cannibale (hereinafter referred to as Story, reflecting the 2007 English ...
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This chapter examines the juxtaposition of cannibalism and sexual appetites in Maryse Condé's Histoire de la femme cannibale (hereinafter referred to as Story, reflecting the 2007 English translation) and Andrea Levy's Small Island (2004). It argues that while the ideologically fraught figure of the cannibal has long offered a fertile ground on which to construct a counter-hegemonic aesthetic of Caribbean discourses, few if any writers explore the equation between two major constructs—the sexual and alimentary transgressions—that define the cannibal. Story and Small Island evidence that (post)imperial panics have consistently framed a range of (post)colonial conflicts in the vocabulary of alimentary and sexual deviance as a ploy to mask these very same appetites in the (neo)imperial venture. In Small Island, cannibalism is a hidden theme that lurks beneath the surface of seemingly mundane and insignificant moments of encounter. In Story, Condé deconstructs the presumed benevolence of France toward Guadeloupe through an astute critique of the dominant imagery of France as mother who nurtures and sustains her children.Less
This chapter examines the juxtaposition of cannibalism and sexual appetites in Maryse Condé's Histoire de la femme cannibale (hereinafter referred to as Story, reflecting the 2007 English translation) and Andrea Levy's Small Island (2004). It argues that while the ideologically fraught figure of the cannibal has long offered a fertile ground on which to construct a counter-hegemonic aesthetic of Caribbean discourses, few if any writers explore the equation between two major constructs—the sexual and alimentary transgressions—that define the cannibal. Story and Small Island evidence that (post)imperial panics have consistently framed a range of (post)colonial conflicts in the vocabulary of alimentary and sexual deviance as a ploy to mask these very same appetites in the (neo)imperial venture. In Small Island, cannibalism is a hidden theme that lurks beneath the surface of seemingly mundane and insignificant moments of encounter. In Story, Condé deconstructs the presumed benevolence of France toward Guadeloupe through an astute critique of the dominant imagery of France as mother who nurtures and sustains her children.
Kathryn Lachman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380307
- eISBN:
- 9781781387290
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380307.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Borrowed Forms examines the use of music by contemporary novelists and critics from across the francophone, anglophone, and hispanophone worlds. Through readings of Nancy Huston, Maryse Condé, J. M. ...
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Borrowed Forms examines the use of music by contemporary novelists and critics from across the francophone, anglophone, and hispanophone worlds. Through readings of Nancy Huston, Maryse Condé, J. M. Coetzee, Assia Djebar, Julio Cortázar, and other late twentieth-century novelists, the book shows how writers deploy musical strategies to expand the possibilities of the novel in response to the demands of transnational citizenship. The book transcends disciplinary boundaries to reveal the entanglement of musical and narrative forms in ethical, historical, and political questions. Critics from Mikhail Bakhtin to Edward Said established musical forms as an indispensable framework for understanding the novel. This study argues that the turn to music in late twentieth-century fiction is linked to new questions of authority and representation, as writers seek to democratize the novel, bring marginalized voices into fiction, articulate increasingly hybrid subjectivities, and negotiate the conflicting histories of the diverse groups that make up today's multicultural societies. The book traces the influence of four musical concepts on literary theory and the contemporary novel: polyphony, or the art of combining multiple, equal voices; counterpoint, the carefully regulated setting of one voice against another; variation, the virtuosic exploration of a given theme; and opera, the dramatic setting of a story to a musical score. Borrowed Forms is both a vital reference for those seeking to understand the influence of music on twentieth-century literary theory, and a rigorous and interdisciplinary framework for considering the transnational novel.Less
Borrowed Forms examines the use of music by contemporary novelists and critics from across the francophone, anglophone, and hispanophone worlds. Through readings of Nancy Huston, Maryse Condé, J. M. Coetzee, Assia Djebar, Julio Cortázar, and other late twentieth-century novelists, the book shows how writers deploy musical strategies to expand the possibilities of the novel in response to the demands of transnational citizenship. The book transcends disciplinary boundaries to reveal the entanglement of musical and narrative forms in ethical, historical, and political questions. Critics from Mikhail Bakhtin to Edward Said established musical forms as an indispensable framework for understanding the novel. This study argues that the turn to music in late twentieth-century fiction is linked to new questions of authority and representation, as writers seek to democratize the novel, bring marginalized voices into fiction, articulate increasingly hybrid subjectivities, and negotiate the conflicting histories of the diverse groups that make up today's multicultural societies. The book traces the influence of four musical concepts on literary theory and the contemporary novel: polyphony, or the art of combining multiple, equal voices; counterpoint, the carefully regulated setting of one voice against another; variation, the virtuosic exploration of a given theme; and opera, the dramatic setting of a story to a musical score. Borrowed Forms is both a vital reference for those seeking to understand the influence of music on twentieth-century literary theory, and a rigorous and interdisciplinary framework for considering the transnational novel.
William Ghosh
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- December 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198861102
- eISBN:
- 9780191893070
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198861102.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Travel writing in English has historically been seen as a genre in which British travellers visit and write about colonized places. This chapter, by contrast, reads a number of works in which ...
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Travel writing in English has historically been seen as a genre in which British travellers visit and write about colonized places. This chapter, by contrast, reads a number of works in which Caribbean travellers describe their experiences in Africa. It examines Lamming’s Pleasures of Exile, V.S. Naipaul’s writings on Zaire and the Ivory Coast, Shiva Naipaul’s North of South, and Maryse Condé’s La Vie sans fards in detail. In these works, the writers revisit and revise the British tradition. Travel writing was a genre through which Caribbean writers thought through and articulated the position of the Caribbean within the new postcolonial world.Less
Travel writing in English has historically been seen as a genre in which British travellers visit and write about colonized places. This chapter, by contrast, reads a number of works in which Caribbean travellers describe their experiences in Africa. It examines Lamming’s Pleasures of Exile, V.S. Naipaul’s writings on Zaire and the Ivory Coast, Shiva Naipaul’s North of South, and Maryse Condé’s La Vie sans fards in detail. In these works, the writers revisit and revise the British tradition. Travel writing was a genre through which Caribbean writers thought through and articulated the position of the Caribbean within the new postcolonial world.
Njeri Githire
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038785
- eISBN:
- 9780252096747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038785.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the preeminence of alimentary-related tropes—particularly cannibalism—and their political significance in ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the preeminence of alimentary-related tropes—particularly cannibalism—and their political significance in the works of select Caribbean and Indian Ocean women writers. These women include Monique Agénor of the Reunion Island; Lindsey Collen, a Mauritian writer of South African background; Maryse Condé of Guadeloupe; Edwidge Danticat, an American writer whose Haitian roots inspire most of her works; Andrea Levy, an English writer of Jamaican descent; Marie-Thérèse Humbert of Mauritius; and Gisèle Pineau, a French writer of Guadeloupean parentage. These writers were chosen based on the significance they have given to metaphors of (non)eating and incorporation to express social, cultural, economic, and political processes through which relations of power are drawn and perpetuated.Less
This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book explores the preeminence of alimentary-related tropes—particularly cannibalism—and their political significance in the works of select Caribbean and Indian Ocean women writers. These women include Monique Agénor of the Reunion Island; Lindsey Collen, a Mauritian writer of South African background; Maryse Condé of Guadeloupe; Edwidge Danticat, an American writer whose Haitian roots inspire most of her works; Andrea Levy, an English writer of Jamaican descent; Marie-Thérèse Humbert of Mauritius; and Gisèle Pineau, a French writer of Guadeloupean parentage. These writers were chosen based on the significance they have given to metaphors of (non)eating and incorporation to express social, cultural, economic, and political processes through which relations of power are drawn and perpetuated.