abstract: This project examines C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul, and George Lamming's appropriation of the European Bildungsroman, a novel depicting the maturation of the hero prompted by his harmonious dialectical relationship with the social realm (Bildung). I contend that James, Naipaul, and Lamming use the Bildungsroman genre to critique colonialism's effects on its subjects, particularly its male subjects who attend colonial schools that present them with disconcerting curricula and gender ideologies that hinder their intellectual and social development. Disingenuously cloaked in paternalistic rhetoric promising the advancement of "uncivilized" peoples, colonialism, these novels show, actually impedes the development of its subjects. Central to these writers' critiques is the use of houses, space, and land. Although place functions differently in Minty Alley, A House for Mr. Biswas, and In the Castle of My Skin, the novels under consideration here, the corresponding relationship between a mature, autonomous self and a home of one's own is made evident in each. Tragically, the men in these novels are never able to find communities in which they cease to feel out of place, nor are they ever able to find secure domestic spaces. Because the discourse of home so closely parallels the discourse of Bildung, I contend that the protagonists' inability to find stable housing suggests the inaccessibility of Bildung in a colonized space. Further, I assert that this literal homelessness is symbolic of the educated male's cultural exile; he is unable to find a location where he can live in dialectical harmony with any community, which is the ideal aim of Bildung. Leaving the Caribbean proves to be the colonized male's only strategy for pursuing Bildung; thus, these novels suggest that while Bildung is impossible in the Caribbean, it is not impossible for the Caribbean subject. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2012

Este trabalho apresenta ao leitor de língua portuguesa a tradução da obra crioula Antan denfance, de Patrick Chamoiseau. Para melhor compreensão dos aspectos linguísticos e extralinguísticos do livro, desenvolvemos um estudo inicial, dividido em três capítulos, que obedece ao percurso: contexto histórico, autor e obra. O primeiro capítulo contempla a história da Martinica, desde os primeiros habitantes até a colonização francesa, evidenciando as principais consequências do movimento colonizador no que diz respeito ao ser, ao espaço e à língua. No segundo capítulo, traçamos um perfil do autor, apresentando um pouco da sua produção intelectual, sua participação no movimento literário da crioulidade e seu projeto literário, de maneira a ressaltar suas peculiaridades estilísticas. O terceiro capítulo destina-se a refletir sobre as competências necessárias ao tradutor de obras culturalmente marcadas, analisando não somente as nossas principais escolhas tradutológicas, como a característica mais elementar de Antan denfance: o enraizamento na tradição oral. / This paper presents to Portuguese-speaking readers the translation of the Creole work Antan denfance, by Patrick Chamoiseau. For better understanding of linguistic and extralinguistic aspects of this book, we developed an initial study, divided into three chapters, which follows this path: historical context, author and work. The first chapter covers the History of Martinique, from the earliest inhabitants to the French colonization, highlighting the main consequences of the colonization movement to the individuals, the space and the language. In the second chapter, we have compiled a profile of the author, where we introduce some of his intellectual production, his participation in the créolité literary movement and his literary project, in order to emphasize his stylistic peculiarities. The third chapter intends to examine the skills necessary to translate culturally marked works, by analyzing not only our main choices of translation, but also the most elementary aspect of this work: rooting in oral tradition.

L’œuvre romanesque d’Édouard Glissant propose une exploration, ample et rigoureuse, de quelques problèmes majeurs affectant ce qu’il appelle « les humanités ». Dès ce pluriel (qui préfère à « l’humanité » – sans doute trop singulière – le pluriel que commande la diversité des expériences, des lieux et des cultures) Glissant affirme la place centrale qui revient à la Relation dans son œuvre et sa pensée. Envisagée sous l’angle des mouvements et errements des peuples du monde, cette Relation est décrite à travers des phénomènes divers tels que l’histoire raturée des esclaves dans les Amériques ; l’émergence des sociétés créolisées, portant le témoignage d’une vérité anthropologique qui les dépasse ; ou encore les rapports de ces réalités nouvelles avec les formes de récits qui les accompagnent. Or, l’une des forces du roman glissantien est d’ancrer l’exploration de ces problèmes dans une écriture qui s’interroge sans cesse sur ses propres moyens et modes d’énonciation. La place réservée au problème de l’oubli comme rature de l’histoire ainsi qu’aux phénomènes de répétition, de la forme fragmentaire et de l’énonciation-relais révèle une œuvre qui inscrit dans sa forme énonciative la clé des enjeux qu’elle se propose d’élucider. C’est cette hypothèse que le présent travail vérifie. Ce faisant, il s’agit de contribuer aussi bien aux recherches menées en sémiotique énonciative qu’en littérature française contemporaine. / Édouard Glissant’s novel is an ample and compelling exploration of some major issues regarding what he terms “humanities”. Already the plural form (which replaces “humanity”, with its undertones of oneness) conveys a sense of diversity of experiences, of places and cultures. Thus Glissant stresses the central role assigned to the concept of Relation in his work and thought. Considered under the perspective of the movements and ills of the world’s peoples, Relation is described through such phenomena as the crossed-out history of slaves in the Americas, the emergence of creolized societies (which bear an anthropological truth valid for all), or the relationship between these new realities and the forms of narrative that account for them. Interestingly, one strength of Glissant’s novel is that it explores these issues through a narrative which constantly examines its own means and ways of enunciation. This can be seen through the role devolved to forgetfulness resulting from the crossing out of history, as well as through phenomena such as repetitions, the novel’s fragmentary form or relayed-enunciations. With these phenomena, Glissant’s work engraves in its enunciation system a key to understanding the issues it explores. That is the hypothesis verified in the present work. The latter aspires to be a contribution to research in semiotics of enunciation as well as in contemporary French literature.

This dissertation analyzes three novels by contemporary female Caribbean and Latin American Afro-descendent writers of the diaspora: Peruvian Lucía Charún-Illescas' Malambo (2001), Brazilian Ana Maria Gonçalves' Um defeito de cor (2006), and Puerto Rican Mayra Santos-Febres' Fe en disfraz (2009). In these texts, the old and the new intermingle in the space of the narrative. The colonial past is reexamined and reconstructed out of the need to understand its reminiscences into the present and the necessity to transform the future. These decolonial narratives of the contemporary African diaspora foster an expression of the interconnection between the two colonial spaces: where the African-descendents, especially the black female, were the objects of submission, and the present time, where the remnants of the past persist. I propose a reading of how the writers decolonize via history, memory, myth, and sex by challenging the construction of the colonial patriarchal rule and rewriting a new history to include the marginalized voices. Decolonization here implies a deconstruction of the image of colored people, especially black women in colonial time where they were deprived of their culture, personhood, and subjectivity. The writers propose a social transformation in which colonialism, racism, sexism, and classism are confronted and a new society is created, without the colonial power structure. The writers return to the roots of power and domination and examine the dynamics of the interconnection of gender, race, class, and sexuality and propose a new gender paradigm.

My dissertation is about the feminine Caribbean perspective in three novels: Calypso (1996) by Tatiana Lobo; L'exil selon Julia (1996) by Gisèle Pineau; and Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) by Edwidge Danticat. The values and traditions involved in the patriarchal system are reevaluated to allow the Caribbean female voice to express itself. The novels are analyzed through the historical and linguistic specificities of the regions studied: the modernization of a small town on the Atlantic Coast of Costa Rica, exile from the Caribbean to France, and the Haitian Diaspora in the United States. The Caribbean is seen as a heterogeneous area sharing particular and general historical facts. Female figures express themselves in English, French and Spanish concerning the domestic sphere and how it is affected by ethnic, migratory, and cultural traditions. Female bonds and religion work together, giving agency to the female characters and allowing them to reconcile their unique experiences. The novels are understood together from a pan-Caribbean feminist perspective informed by the works of Édouard Glissant and Chandra Talpade Mohanty.

This thesis engages with Wilson Harris's vision for the Caribbean in light of the processes of land settlement, appropriation, genocide and slave trafficking that have historically denied the region's population of human identity. Concerned primarily with Wilson Harris's first four published novels, Palace of the Peacock (1960), The Far Journey of Oudin (1961), The Whole Armour (1962), and The Secret Ladder (1963), which were then grouped together and republished as The Guyana Quartet (1985), the study of this quartet also focuses on Harris's critical essays, most notably "The Amerindian Legacy" (1990). Firstly, this thesis situates Wilson Harris within the context of postcolonial thought and Caribbean literature in the 20th century. Then, it focuses on the remnants of colonial conquest that appear continuously in Harris's four novels under the repeated motif of pursuit. By exploring the presence of Jungian thought in Harris's fictional writing and critical writing, as well as the immanent ontology of the Caribbean that underpins the author's vision, the thesis draws out Harris's response to the cycle of persecution that he believes to stagnate the Caribbean. Harris's mythopoetic revisioning of Caribbean identity in The Guyana Quartet proposes a form of rebirth that transforms the dialectic between...

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Having built her career and her reputation on her novels, Maryse Condé is not a familiar name in the theater. However, at the beginning of her career Condé was very involved with theater, and her first published works were plays: Dieu nous l’a donné… (1972) and Mort d’Oluwémi d’Ajumako (1973) preceded Condé’s first novel, Heremakhonon (1976). Though these plays do not get as much attention as do her more recent novels, they continue to have a lot to offer: they are highly dramatic, their themes remain relevant to the world today, and they are accessible for a modern audience. This M.F.A. thesis therefore presents the first English language translations of these two early plays of Condé’s, translated as God Gave Him to Us… and The Death of Oluwémi of Ajumako. The translations are preceded by an Introduction exploring the relevance of these plays for a modern audience, the influences that led Condé to craft these two dramas, and the challenges of the translation process.

This article studies the possibility of perpetrator trauma in Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker. The article gives a brief historical background of the political violence in Haiti that occurred under the Duvalier dictatorship and focuses specifically on the role of Tonton Macoutes, the violent enforcers of much of Duvalier's oppression. Drawing on trauma theory, the article argues that perpetrators have been very little studied within trauma studies because of the possible moral implications of giving research time to individuals who have often chosen their own path of violence. Along with theorists such as Kali Tal and Dominick LaCapra, this article investigates the difficult position of perpetrators who are also victims or those who have been traumatized in the act of violence. The paper finally argues that perpetrators may benefit from the opportunity to work through their trauma in the same way that victims work through trauma as a means of healing. In making this argument, this article shows the need for trauma theorists to study perpetrators in addition to current studies on victims and also shows an in depth study of the main character and primary perpetrator in The Dew Breaker.

The main purpose of this dissertation is to understand the emergence of Afro Hispanic American Literature and the causes that delayed its emergence at the end of the twentieth century. I study this process through three novels written in the last decades of the twentieth century as works representative of three national literatures that develop concurrently. These novels are Changó, el gran putas (1983) by Afro-Colombian writer Manuel Zapata Olivella, Jonatás y Manuela (1994) by Afro-Ecuadorian writer Luz Argentina Chiriboga and Malambo (2001) by Afro Peruvian writer Lucía Charún Illescas. The study of these three novels from within their own literary contexts allows for the tracing of national and international developments that made possible the emergence of these minority voices. On the other hand, by placing these texts in a broader historical context allows us to chart a cartography of African roots that although begins in the Caribbean; its horizon expands beyond the Caribbean proper and into the continent. Thus, each novel represents a moment in the African saga in the Americas, a new vision of its history and complex social landscape; and finally a new proposal for the future. Zapata Olivella proposes mestizaje as the ontological base in which Latin American reality was founded and points towards the existence of an African consciousness that is transcontinental. Luz Argentina Chiriboga presents us with the intimate side of history through the tale of two women: Manuela Sáenz and Jonatás, her slave, that represent two sides of the story. Lucía Charún Illescas reconstructs life in Malambo an old slave barracks in colonial Lima and through it unveils hidden worlds in our history. Each novel reconstucts hidden recesses of our history and thus force us to engage in a meaningful dialogue with it and with ourselves.