Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of English Language and Literature, August 1997. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Cette thèse examine la représentation littéraire de migrations depuis des colonies vers les centres impériaux à l'époque de la décolonisation par l'analyse comparative de romans antillais en langue anglaise et maghrébins en langue française traitant d'immigration vers la Grande-Bretagne et la France respectivement. L'attention portée à la relation de domination est un point de convergence majeur. Lamming, Chraïbi et Kateb la présentent comme une relation coloniale ayant des effets tant économiques que psychologiques et culturels. Boudjedra et Ben Jelloun dans les années 1970 placent et l'immigration et la colonisation dans le cadre plus large de l'exploitation capitaliste. La représentation des conditions de vie difficiles et de la marginalisation des immigrés participe dans ces romans d'une critique générale de la modernité européenne. Les auteurs maghrébins dénoncent le caractère oppressant de la rationalité occidentale, tandis que les romanciers antillais se concentrent sur les racines coloniales de l'attitude des Britanniques face aux populations non-Européennes. Des deux côtés, on répond au discours colonialiste et à la représentation positive du colonisateur à travers la manipulation du point de vue et de la voix narratifs et le thème de la folie. La plupart des écrivains réfutent les images négatives des immigrés en insistant sur des aspects négligés, tels que la dimension émotionnelle de leur vécu et les tenants et aboutissants coloniaux des relations entre immigrés et autochtones. Ce faisant, leurs représentations finissent par se conformer à la figure de l'immigré sous-tendant les discours qu'ils dénoncent. Leurs préoccupations se distinguent de celles de générations d'auteurs ultérieures et de discours récents sur les populations d'origine maghrébine et antillaise en France et en Grande-Bretagne / This thesis examines the literary representation of migration from a colony to the imperial metropolis in the period of decolonisation through a comparative analysis of novels by Anglophone Caribbean and Francophone Maghribi writers about migration to Britain and France respectively. A major point of convergence is the focus on the relationship of domination. Lamming, Chraïbi and Kateb address this explicitly as a colonial relationship that is psychological and cultural as well as economic, whereas the 1970s writers Boudjedra and Ben Jelloun place both immigration and colonisation within a wider framework of capitalist exploitation. The difficult material conditions and the racism targeting immigrants are not depicted for their own sake but are the occasion of a wide-ranging critique of European modernity. Maghribi writers attack the rationality of Western civilisation as oppressive, whereas the Caribbean novelists focus on the colonial roots of attitudes to non-Europeans. Both sets of writers nonetheless provide responses to European colonialist discourse and to the positive self-presentation of the coloniser through the manipulation of narrative point of view and voice and through the theme of mental breakdown. Most of the novelists set out to refute negative representations of immigrants by restoring aspects they feel are neglected, in particular the emotional dimension of the immigrant experience and the colonial determinants of the relationship between immigrants and natives. In doing so their representations of immigration often conform to the immigrant figure underpinning the discourses they attack. Their preoccupations are distinct from those of later writers and recent discourses about Caribbean and Maghribi populations in Britain and France : with the exception of Selvon and, more ambiguously, Mengouchi and Ramdane, the novelists are not interested in the process of formation of ethnic-diasporic minorities in France and Britain

Il presente elaborato si propone di esplorare la tradizione del romanzo di formazione caraibico considerando il genere del romanzo di formazione, le sue caratteristiche, la sua storia, e individuando le peculiarità che il genere ha sviluppato all'interno della tradizione post-coloniale, soprattutto nel contesto caraibico di lingua inglese. Il primo capitolo stabilisce cosa si intenda con “romanzo di formazione caraibico” e introduce i dodici romanzi selezionati per questo studio. La tesi quindi procede identificando quattro argomenti principali, o macro temi, a ciascuno dei quali è dedicato un capitolo, e confrontando il modo in cui questi vengono sviluppati nei diversi romanzi. I temi sono: la scuola e l’istruzione, la cultura e la storia, la politica, la partenza. La tesi si chiude con una breve riflessione sul tema del ritorno. / The present study aims to explore the Caribbean Bildungsroman tradition by considering the Bildungsroman genre, its features, and history, and by pointing out the peculiarities that the genre developed within the postcolonial tradition and specifically in the anglophone Caribbean context. The first chapter establishes what is meant by “Caribbean Bildungsroman” and introduces the twelve novels selected for this study. The study then proceeds by identifying four main topics, or macro themes, each developed in a separate chapter, and by comparing the way such themes are dealt with in each of the novels. The themes are: school and education, culture and history, politics, departure. The study closes on a brief reflection on the possibility of return.