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Cette thèse porte sur l’évolution du personnage féminin, des points de vue physique, psychologique et social, dans vingt-deux romans publiés entre 1924 et 2012, par dix-neuf écrivaines issues des Caraïbes francophones, soit, de la Guadeloupe, d’Haïti et de la Martinique. Le corpus est divisé en trois tranches chronologiques, à savoir, les romans qui ont été publiés entre 1924 et 1959 (c’est-à-dire, la période qui correspond plus ou moins aux mouvements littéraires de l’Indigénisme et de la Négritude), puis les romans publiés entre 1960 et 1989 (ou la période qui coïncide avec la littérature de la dictature, la littérature de l’exil, et l’Antillanité) et, en dernier lieu, les romans qui ont été publiés entre 1990 et 2012 (durant la période qui équivaut à la littérature post-dictature, à la littérature migrante, et à la Créolité). Après avoir situé les œuvres de notre corpus dans leur contexte historique, nous avons analysé celles qui tombent dans la catégorie des récits de soi, puisque plus du tiers des textes à l’étude, neuf sur vingt-deux, ont recours à cette stratégie narrative. En nous appuyant sur les théories de l’autobiographie et de l’autofiction, nous constatons qu’à travers les récits et le « je » subjectif des protagonistes, les écrivaines réécrivent en quelque sorte l’histoire d’un point de vue endogène. Les récits se transforment en terreaux fertiles qui donnent aux écrivaines l’occasion de contourner à loisir les règles du pacte autobiographique et de franchir allègrement la frontière entre le fictif et le réel, en utilisant diverses ruses auctoriales par l’entremise desquelles elles représentent la femme noire, dans une perspective qui se veut valorisante, tout en lui redonnant, de manière symbolique, la voix qui lui a été usurpée pendant la période esclavagiste. L’analyse du personnage féminin démontre que la composante raciale demeure un facteur incontournable dans l’univers romanesque féminin des Caraïbes francophones. À l’appui des théories du personnage et d’études qui portent sur l’écriture des femmes, nous remarquons que, sur le plan physique, les écrivaines de la première génération ont surtout créé des héroïnes à la carnation pale, alors que les personnages féminins noirs sont secondaires, du point de vue actantiel. Cette tendance change progressivement dans les romans des écrivaines de la seconde génération qui incluent de plus en plus de protagonistes noires ou à la peau foncée qui sont au cœur de l’action. Au fil des ans, les écrivaines mettent davantage en scène des protagonistes qui illustrent avec acuité l’aspect multiethnique et multiracial des îles. Nous avons procédé à l’analyse psychologique du personnage féminin en nous basant sur les théories féministes. Si les héroïnes romanesques de la première génération d’écrivaines ont tendance à accepter leur sort avec résignation, celles de la seconde génération se battent avec acharnement pour s’émanciper des influences néfastes qui minent leur existence. Les héroïnes des romans contemporains vont encore plus loin dans leur lutte pour faire valoir leurs droits, en commettant souvent des actes qui sont jugés contraires à la norme. Sur le plan social, force est de constater que la race et la situation familiale des protagonistes durant leur enfance déterminent en grande partie la place qu’elles occuperont plus tard dans l’échelle sociale. Les éléments racial, physique, psychologique et social influent l’un sur l’autre et ont un grand impact sur l’issue de l’intrigue. Notre étude porte également sur la nature des rapports du personnage féminin avec les personnages masculins. Une fois de plus, à l’appui d’éléments se rapportant, entre autres, à la théorie du personnage et aux théories féministes, nous avons classé les personnages masculins selon les catégories : du bon, de la brute, de l’infâme et du criminel, en fonction de leurs interactions avec les héroïnes romanesques. Au facteur racial, s’ajoute le lieu de l’intrigue comme déterminant de l’issue de l’histoire. Pour ce qui est des relations entre les personnages féminins, nous constatons qu’au cours des cent dernières années, ces relations évoluent d’une dynamique individuelle (alors que les héroïnes romanesques comptent exclusivement sur la loyauté de leur confidente), à une dynamique collective, alors que l’on constate de plus en plus l’emploi du topos de l’espace clos comme stratégie pour assurer, a priori, la protection (physique, psychologique, sociale) des personnages féminins en question. Notre analyse des substituts maternels démontre, entre autres, l’évolution de la figure grand-maternelle qui passe progressivement du statut d’aïeule mythique à celui d’éducatrice subversive, et à celui de protagoniste qui occupe une place prépondérante dans l’intrigue et au sein de son entourage. / This thesis focuses on the physical, psychological and social evolution of female characters, in twenty-two novels that were published between 1924 and 2012, by nineteen women writers from the French Caribbean, namely from Guadeloupe, Haiti and Martinique. The corpus is divided into three chronological brackets. The first chronological bracket consists of the novels that were published between 1924 and 1959 (or the period that more or less corresponds to the Indigenism and Négritude literary movements). The second chronological bracket consists of novels that were published between 1960 and 1989 (that is, the period corresponding to Dictatorship Literature, Exile Literature and Antillanité). The third and last chronological bracket comprises novels that were published between 1990 and 2012 (namely, during the period that corresponds to Post-Dictatorship Literature, Migrant Literature and Créolité). After situating the novels in their historical context, we analyzed those that fall in the first-person narrative category, since over a third of the novels we are studying (nine out of twenty-two) use this narrative strategy. Drawing on autobiographical and autofiction theories, we find that through the subjective “I” of the protagonists’ stories, the women writers somehow rewrite history from an endogenous perspective. The narratives then become fertile grounds that allow the writers to subvert the rules of the autobiographical pact at their will, while merrily crossing the boundaries between truth and fiction. The women writers use various auctorial ruses through which they aim to represent the Black woman in a positive manner and symbolically give her back her voice, which was silenced during slavery. Analyzing female characters demonstrates that race remains an inescapable factor in the French Caribbean fiction world. Using theories pertaining to fiction characters and women’s writing, we notice that from a physical standpoint, the women writers from the first generation mainly created fair-skinned heroines, while Black female characters were mostly represented as secondary personages. This practice progressively changed as women writers from the second generation created more dark-skinned and Black female characters that are front and center in the plots. Throughout the years, women writers showcase more and more protagonists which keenly illustrate the multiethnic and multicultural aspects of the islands. We proceeded with the psychological analysis of female characters, by using feminist theories. If the heroines created by the first generation of women writers tend to accept their fate with resignation, those created by the second generation of women writers relentlessly fight to free themselves from the negative influences that undermine their lives. The protagonists of contemporary novels go even further when they fight for their rights, and often act in ways that are considered to be against the norm. On the social front, the race and the family situation of the protagonists during their childhood will play a great part in the position they will hold in the socioeconomic ladder, later on. The racial, physical, psychological and social components intersect and have a certain influence over one another, as they also play a significant role in the ending of the story. Our study also focuses on the nature of the interactions of female characters with male characters. Once again, using elements pertaining to the theories of fiction characters, we ranked the male characters in the following four categories: the good male characters, the bullies, the wicked and the criminals, with respect to the types of relations they sustain with the heroines. Along with the race factor, the location of the plot also has an impact on the ending of the story. When focusing on the types of relations that occur strictly among female characters, we note that these relations have evolved from an individual standpoint in the early-years novels (while the heroines exclusively relied on the loyalty of their confident), to a collective one, as women writers increasingly rely on the use of the topos of the closed space, as a strategy that a priori ensures the (physical, psychological, social) safety of female characters. Among other things, our analysis of mother substitutes shows the evolution of the grand-mother figure, which progressively transitions from mythical ancestor to subversive educator, then to a leading character who takes centre stage in the plot, and has a good standing among the members of her entourage

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This thesis examines Antiguan narratives’ peculiar engagements with the national question. It draws largely upon the works of four writers—Jamaica Kincaid, Joanne C. Hillhouse, Marie-Elena John and Frieda Cassin—and selected calypsonians including Antigua’s leading female and male calypsonians, Queen Ivena and King Short Shirt. It reads anxiety as the chief organising principle of the singular deconstructions of gender, ‘racial’, ethnic, and class identities undertaken by these texts. I offer a retooled account of anxiety that elaborates the local/regional concept of bad-mindedness informing the core of the narratives’ deconstructive and recuperative projects. Chapter one probes the bad-minded delimiting of Antiguan literary production. It interrogates the singular cohesive Caribbean canon typically suggested by critical readings, which obscure the narratives/ literary traditions of smaller territories such as Antigua. It also highlights locally produced canons’ intervention into the dominant canons/maps of Caribbean literary traditions. Its discussion is underpinned by the concept of bad-mindedness which I use to frame the evils that locate the smaller territory and its inhabitants at the cultural periphery. Chapter two examines the texts’ enunciations of the bad-mindedness inherent in the construction of the composite gendered identities of 19^th century Creole women, 20^th century working-class Afro-Antiguan women and men, and 20^th century proletarian Carib women. It refashions Erna Brodber’s kumbla trope, Kenneth Ramchand’s notion of terrified consciousness, and Jamaica Kincaid’s line trope to elaborate these enunciations. Chapter three examines Antiguan calypsos’ record of the peculiar responses of small-islanders to their subordinate position within the ‘global village’ and continuing entanglement in British colonialism and neo-colonial relationships and processes. It draws upon Charles Mill’s theory of smadditization/ smadditizin’ or the Afro-Caribbean struggle for recognition of personhood and Paget Henry’s account of the dependency theory to analyse the calypsos’ anxious insistence upon Afro-Antiguan personhood. The primary conclusion of my thesis is that an engagement with the neglected literary traditions of the smaller territories and national literatures on the whole, is likely to excavate a cornucopia of currently sidelined experiences, issues, and transnational relationships which can only serve to enrich our postcolonial conversations.

Within the Caribbean, the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique are unusual: they are French overseas departments and thus also European Union members. As such, they must assimilate to French national culture even though their heterogeneous populations, mainly descendants of exploited imported labour, have their own unique island identity. Their heavy economic dependence on France and the effects of modernization and globalization pose further identitarian challenges for them. Franco-Antillean literature clearly reflects this long-standing identity confusion. This thesis explores two very recent novels— Toxic Island by Guadeloupean Ernest Pépin and L’Empreinte à Crusoé by Martinican Patrick Chamoiseau— and their divergent stylistic treatments of individuation. Both are inspired by Édouard Glissant’s theories of Relation and Tout- Monde; both engage questions of language, orality, the island space, race, the subject of alterity and the role of the arts and artists in identity formation. Yet both are also marked by distinctly unique forms of ambivalence. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015 / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

“In Between Places” is a study in literary geography at the end of empire. It begins from the premise that decolonization itself is a question of place and the relationship of people to places. From this premise, the dissertation explores the narrative techniques that emerge from this moment of historical transformation, in which decolonization was inevitable but not yet fully achieved. The formal elements of decolonial fiction—an emphasis on the individual transformation of place, the incorporation of narrative settings both temporary and fragile—express the ways that spatial relations were central to the political aims of late colonial and early postcolonial writers from across the globe and who express a range of complicated cultural politics. This dissertation begins with an introduction that situates British decolonial fiction in terms of theories of space and place, the transition between modernism and postcolonialism, and current critical debates surrounding forms of anticolonial critique in the twentieth century. In the subsequent four chapters, the dissertation provides case studies of the narrative fiction of Jean Rhys, V. S. Naipaul, George Lamming, and Doris Lessing. Combining formal analysis, archival research, and literary and political history, this dissertation reconstructs the ways that colonial and postcolonial subjects respond to the places they inhabit—at the level of the room, the house, and the city. To tell this story, the chapters move from the abstract space of geopolitics to different sites within urban environments and domestic households. “In Between Places” explains how place functions aesthetically and politically; how Caribbean, African, and English sites were physically marked by colonialism; and how midcentury writers of decolonization used literary setting to resist myths of imperial belonging as well as to uphold them.

The representation of the witch in French literature has evolved considerably over the centuries. While originally portrayed as a benevolent and caring healer in works by Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, and the anonymous author of Amadas et Ydoine , the witch eventually underwent a dramatic and unfortunate transformation. By the fifteenth century, authors began to portray her as a malevolent and dangerous agent of the Christian Devil. Martin Le Franc, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, François Rabelais, and Pierre Corneille all created evil witch figures that corresponded with this new definition. It was not until the eighteenth century, through the works of Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes, that the rehabilitation of the witch began. By the twentieth century, Anne Hébert, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maryse Condé, and Sebastiano Vassalli began to rewrite the witch character by engaging in a process of demystification and by demonstrating that the "witch" was really just a victim of the society in which she lived. These authors humanized their witch figures by concentrating on the victimization of their witch protagonists and by exposing the ways in which their fictional societies unjustly created identities for their witch protagonists that were based on false judgments and rumors. Hébert attacks Sigmund Freud's association of the witch and the hysteric, Sartre utilizes his witches to expose many of his existential ideals, Condé highlights the role that racism played in witchcraft, and Vassalli strives to rewrite history by telling the story from the point of view of his witch character. Each twentieth-century author provides a story that deconstructs the very nature of the witch as this had been constructed over time, and shows how witches expose the problems associated with understanding one's place in the world in both their individual and their social dimensions. The witch, for these authors, challenges dominant norms and reveals how much our identities are influenced by our interactions with other individuals. And, because the witches in each text are marginal beings, they expose the repressiveness of their particular environments and the idiosyncrasies of their cultures. In all these ways, or so these 20 th -century authors contend, we as modern readers, can relate to their situations and learn from their stories.

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Le récit magico-réaliste entretient avec l’écriture de l’histoire un rapport très étroit. Entre les années 1940 et les années 1980, dans toute l’aire géographique américaine, s’est développé et a évolué une fiction magico-réaliste qui se donne comme objectif la transcription de données anthropologiques, concernant les populations dominées américaines, qu’elles soient composées d’autochtones, d’esclaves ou de descendants d’esclaves, dans un univers romanesque où réalisme et magie se côtoient sans tensions. Ainsi, en abordant les périodes passées du continent américain, les auteurs de récits magico-réalistes ont construit un type de fiction qu’ils ont façonné dans le but de permettre une expression littéraire de l’opération historiographique, qui ne peut pas se substituer à la science historique, mais qui peut donner, d’une façon qui tire parti des potentialités de la fiction, une voix à ceux qu’un discours dominant et des structures de pouvoir ont longtemps laissés dans l’ombre. Nous étudierons donc comment les récits magico-réalistes écrivent l’histoire, et notamment restituent des visions du monde longtemps ignorées, dans une perspective proche de l’histoire des représentations. Une telle entreprise littéraire et historique constitue par-là même un phénomène structurant pour le champ littéraire américain, mais aussi caribéen. Notre corpus d’étude trilingue réunit des auteurs de tout le continent américain : Miguel Ángel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Toni Morrison, Wilson Harris, Toni Cade Bambara, Jean-Louis Baghio’o, Jacques Stephen Alexis et Maryse Condé. / The magical realistic narrative is deeply linked with the writing of history. Between the 1940’s and the 1980’s, throughout the entire America, has been developed and has evolved the magic realism which let the authors of such narratives to transcribe anthropological datas, coming from dominated populations of America (Natives, slaves or former slaves) in novels in which realism and magic can mix without tension. Then, by describing the past periods of the American continent, the authors of magic realism narratives have built a kind of fiction able to imitate, but not replace, the historical investigation : they can, with the help of the specific resources of fiction, give a voice to those who where kept in the dark for so long. We will study how the authors of magic realism narratives write history, et transcribe the representations of people who were not considered before. Such a literary phenomenon is fundamental in the building of an American literary filed. Our trilingual corpus gathers these nine authors : Miguel Ángel Asturias, Alejo Carpentier, Juan Rulfo, Toni Morrison, Wilson Harris, Toni Cade Bambara, Jean-Louis Baghio’o, Jacques Stephen Alexis et Maryse Condé.