Defined as a stage of history that began in the Western world before spreading around the world, modernity has proven to be a controversial concept for many scholars and critics. This thesis revisits the treatment of modernity in Francophone postcolonial Africa through the novels of three Francophone African women authors: Ken Bugul, Werewere Liking and the late Angèle Rawiri. Drawing on a corpus of ten novels (Orphée Dafric, Elle sera de jaspe et de corail, La Memoire amputée by Werewere Liking ; G'amarakano, Fureur et cris des femmes by Angèle Rawiri ; Le Baobab fou, De l'autre côté de regard, Rue Felix Faure, La Folie et la mort, Mes Hommes à moi, by Ken Bugul) ; I explore how these literary texts position modernity as a central question in the present and future of Africa. My analysis examines how, in their novels, these authors represent current problems for African identity. Where modernity entails a discontinuity between past and present that creates emptiness, memory emerges as an important chain of transmission of knowledge. Ken Bugul and Werewere Liking also highlight the madness of those with postcolonial political power, and the consequences for the people, who themselves become mad because of the actions of leaders. Angèle Rawiri's novels emphasize the dislocation of self amid the paradoxes of modernity in Africa, through the fragmentation of her writing and her depiction of a suffering female body. These authors depict the postcolonial space as a problematic environment. Affecting young women and men most directly, it features an unending quest for identity that is exemplified most strikingly by Ken Bugul's depictions of estranged, wandering protagonists. My study ends with a discussion of gender issues as these authors explore the traps and pitfalls of modernity through their female characters' dilemmas. In the process, they point out how the use of a Western feminist approach to read African women's novels may be another paradox of modernity. My alternative reading takes into account the realities of African women in order to rethink social problems. It also makes deeper understanding of African identity a matter of viewing through local lenses.

Biyi Bandele est un écrivain d'origine nigériane dont l'œuvre novatrice et très riche reste encore peu connue du milieu universitaire en France. Aucune étude de grande ampleur n'a encore été consacrée à sa production et le présent travail essaie de combler ce grand vide. Cette étude qui s'appuie principalement sur les quatre romans de l'auteur a pour objectif de montrer que Biyi Bandele est un romancier carnavalesque et que tout son effort consiste à s'interroger sur les conditions de vie de ses concitoyens nigérians, la nature du pouvoir politique et ses modes d'exercice et les raisons pour lesquelles la construction d'une vraie nation semble impossible au Nigeria tant d'années après l'indépendance. A travers ces diverses interrogations, Biyi Bandele peint surtout un pays dont l'état de déconfiture et d'anomie est tel qu'il semble inconcevable d'en rendre compte avec les moyens traditionnels du roman réaliste européen. Mais grâce à son exceptionnel talent de conteur, Biyi Bandele réussit à nous faire prendre conscience de cette réalité grâce à une langue riche, et un nouvel art de conter inspiré des traditions yoruba et d'autres éléments de la culture populaire nigériane. / Biyi Bandele is a Nigerian writer whose innovative and very rich writings are still little known by academics in France. No large-scale study has been devoted to his writings yet, and this work tries to make up for this gap. This study which is mainly based on the four novels written by Biyi Bandele aims at showing that he is a Carnivalesque novelist and that all of his effort consists in raising questions about the living conditions of his fellow countrymen, the nature of political power and its functioning, and the reasons why nation-building seems impossible in Nigeria so many years after independence . Through these different questions, Biyi Bandele mainly portrays a country in shambles, in such a state of anomy that one can no longer rely on the means of the Europen realist novel to render its situation. But thanks to his exceptional talent as a storyteller, Biyi Bandele manages to make us become aware of this reality by inventing a rich language and a new way of telling story inspired by yoruba traditions and other elements of Nigerian popular culture.