Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Helen Burke, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 30, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 54 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Narrative Bonds: Female Friendship, Affect, and Politics in Novels by 20th-century Francophone Women Writers examines the link between friendship and politics in novels by the Algerian writers Assia Djebar and Taos Amrouche, the Haitian writer Marie Chauvet, and the French writer Claire Etcherelli. In fiction, Francophone women writers develop their own definitions of female friendship, departing from the idealized notions in classical philosophy. I argue that the desire for dyadic friendship between women is an organizing force in women’s writing of the 1940s-1960s, although it may initially appear to be a minor concern. Historically not included in philosophical treatises on friendship, women are excluded from the category of “friends,” and must imagine a form of friendship that they can participate in before making and becoming friends. My dissertation analyzes the literary affect of negation, in which women must feel an absence or impossibility of friendship before they can then define female friendships on their own terms. I argue that female friendship is a form of relations that is new, troubling, and exciting for these women. In the works of my corpus, friendship is inextricable from political awakening and anti-colonial and anti-patriarchal resistance. As women’s political status changed in France, Haiti, and Algeria, women became more fully able to imagine themselves as both subjects and friends.