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.
