Thesis--Heidelberg. / Cover title. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. [3]-6).

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Includes index. Vita. "Tabellen zu Teil Ia." Bibliography: p. 3-30.

My motivation to study Dany Laferrière's novels is inspired by the fact that the majority of studies or analyses made on works from francophone former colonies, are focused on cultural aspects and deal with questions of nationality or social problems. Furthermore, these works, favouring a thematic approach, are considered as testimonial works and are relegated to a lower level than works from the metropole. Formal and stylistic understanding of this literature needs further research. From this viewpoint, Haitian francophone literature still has areas that require deeper investigation. This provides justification for the present research, focused on works by Dany Laferrière, the Haitian francophone author. Two of his works: le goût des jeunes filles (Young girls' cravings), and le cri des oiseaux fous (The screech of crazy birds) are analysed. A big part of these novels is autobiographical. This raises the following questions which we will try to elucidate. Is the author the narrator in those novels? Also, is he the main character, Vieux Os? In le goût des jeunes filles, the narrator is now in his new homeland, in Miami. Through is aunt's character, he drew the picture or the reality of the country of exile. He is also presenting three days he passed with a group of young girls, when he was in Haiti. He remembers how he was initiated to make love for the first time in his life. From there, he depicts the revolt of a young girl, against the oppressing middle class into which she is born. She leaves the perverted circle of her class and joins a group of young liberated girls. Dany Laferrière presents a novel of social observation, which castigates chaotic times created by a sordid dictatorship that results in teenagers' immorality and debauchery. The second novel, le cri des oiseaux fous, set in the time of Bébé Doc Duvalier and the militia, the tontons macoutes, deals with the anguish of the Haitian people, who are afflicted, impoverished and tortured by the dictators. Dany Laferrière depicts violence and abuse of power. The torture inflicted on opponents to the regime deprives mothers of their sons and their husbands, who, in order to protect their lives, are obliged to go into exile. Dany Laferrière stirred my interest because he presents a work of the moment. His novels portray adolescence, dictatorial tyranny and the integration of the exile into a new homeland. Laferrière brings up a worthwhile debate: how to become western when one comes from Haiti (Africa, Asia)? In his quest for identity, the author raises the issues of the contemporary struggle of hybrid identity. The two novels relate the personal trajectory of the author, to illustrate what he has become: a writer. My concern was, firstly, to understand, and to explain through the narrator's socio-historical trajectory, his interest to become a writer. I show that in these works the author projected himself as the narrator. For this phase, I relied on Bourdieu's method "la sociocritique" which allowed me to discover the origin of the author's obsession with the question of identity. He refused to be dictated by politics and wanted to work in the field he chose: literature. This refusal to be constrained is a sign of the search for identity. Secondly, my study has investigated the narrative techniques used by Laferrière, through the analysis of narration. Using one of Philippe Lejeune's works, I examined the relationship between the narrator, the author and the hero. Genette's narratology approach led my way in this study. It is impossible to deal with Laferrière's works as simple examples of francophone literature. At the end of my analyses, I found important literary merit in the organisation of related events. I have shown that Dany Laferrière is a talented writer and his works are an inexhaustible source from which one can draw.

No description available.

Postcolonial Francophone literature, as it has evolved since the independence movements in the French colonies (mainly in Africa and in the Caribbean islands), has known two major moments in the 20th century, where it distanced itself from metropolitan French Literature: in the forties, fifties and sixties, with the movement of the « négritude » and more recently, in the nineties, with the rise of "créolité"- which will lead to the actual current of "Littérature-monde" (2005), and corresponds to the era that will be investigated here. It would be naïve to think that this desire for literary independence could have been fulfilled entirely, while expressed in the language of the "oppressor". In spite of its claims to the contrary, this postcolonial francophone literature remains to this day haunted by its French model. To a certain degree, it is still very much dependent as can be seen from its fixation with Paris as the only "centre" of culture and the frequency of themes such as social parasitism and hospitality. But of course, Francophone literature cannot be reduced to such a simplistic model. Its relationship to French Literature can't be reduced to a purely mimetic one. In spite of (or maybe thanks to) its heavy borrowing from the French canon, it has succeeded in creating a new space of reciprocal exchanges and constant metamorphosis. It is this space that H. Bhabha called "third space", defined by hybridity and "métissage" - a paradoxical way of coping with the double inheritance of the same and the other. In opposition to the static behaviour in which the parasite engages when imitating, one has to conceive, according to G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, a heterogeneous relationship characterized by movement and fluctuation: a "becoming" rather than a "being". It is this notion of constantly changing identities that we will analyze in reaction to parasitism, which remains based on imitation: a need for metamorphosis best expressed in "animalisation" and the loss of identity it produces. In order to test this hypothesis, we will analyze a series of works of fiction where this theme of animalisation is most visible (produced over the past 15 years in Postcolonial Francophone literature). Some of the novels in our corpus are the following: Mémoires d'un porc-épic, by Mabanckou (from Congo); Moi, l'interdite, by Ananda Devi (from Mauritius), Temps de chien by P. Nganang (from Cameroun) and Un Chien mort après lui by Jean Rolin (France). We hope that the relative homogeneity of our findings will allow us to formulate new insights in the way Francophone literature deals with those ever returning questions of identity and otherness.

Mongo Beti, whose real name is Alexander Siyidi Awala, was only 22 years old when he developed his own concept of "freedom". His ideas became public by way of his contribution to the African journal Présence Africaine, published in Paris in the 1950s. Mongo Beti is of the opinion that Africans could enjoy freedom only once independent of their colonial masters. According to Mongo Beti, the colonial masters exploited Africans economically, dominated them politically, and alienated them generally. This work is an analysis of "the quest of freedom by Mongo Beti, an african writer". As regards the approach taken in this work, I will not be following the prevailing mode wherein the author is divorced from his work; rather, I will focus on Mongo Beti as a writer and as an activist. I believe that the knowledge of the life details of an artist can only enrich one's comprehension of his work. The dissertation comprises three parts. The first part focuses on Mongo Beti as a writer and dissident; on his militancy in various organisations such as Amnesty International. It also considers censorship of his works. The second part is a study of Beti's Journal Peuples Noirs - Peuples Africains (PN-PA), a radical Journal with readership and contributors in both France and Africa. PN-PA, owing to its ideological stance, proved a source of irritation to powerful Western nations like France and United States of America. Journals have, traditionally, not been the subject of study in their own right; rather, they were considered a platform for expressing opinions. In this work, I make an attempt to treat PN-PA as an object of study in its own right. The approach is a sociological one. It will enable me to clarify the position of the novelist. The third part of the dissertation analyses Mongo Beti's ten novels, published between 1954 and 1994. The major themes of the novels, namely: the role of missionaries during the colonial period; the conflict between Western and African cultures; analysis of the "myth of Ruben"; and the criticism of dictatorships, are covered in four chapters. It is further argued in part three that there is a clear connection between Beti's writings and the social and political destiny of Africa. The various themes from his works can be divided into four periods: colonial; postcolonial; "the Guillaume" series of novels, and lastly the novel L'Histoire du fou, which indicates a new tendency. The concluding part of the dissertation examines the question of the Institution of African literature, with Beti as a case study. The expression "'Institution of African literature" includes, amongst others, situations whereby African writers are compelled to publish their works outside their native lands, or to rely on foreigners for resources to get their works published. It is argued that such dependence has a marked impact on, among others, the content and accessibility of works by African writers. By focusing on Mongo Beti as an example, it is shown that the activist and the writer are brought together when the question of the Institution of African literature is raised. It is not the purpose of this work to render an apology for Mongo Beti, or to equate him with Francophone Africa or Africa; rather, Beti is merely a case study: an example to illustrate the quest for freedom.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-154). / This thesis examines themes, characters in the oral tales one of the tribes of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the NKUNDO-MONGO tribe. Catholic priests have collected these tales during and after the colonization period. We have used the transcription of the Reverend Hulstaert. In this society, folktales have a major impact as they express some important rules of the tribe and help to convey their meaning. Also, they can transmit knowledge from one generation to another. The first chapter deals with the ethnology of the NKUNDO-MONGO people, to contextualize the tales. We shall try to give a partial analysis of their crisis of cultural identity. The second chapter compares folktales to other oral genres, such as proverbs, poems, ect., witch they often contain. The third chapter analyses essentially the folktales of the NKUNDO-MONGO tribe. In the first section, we analyses folktales that are linked to NKUNDO's family relationships: relationship between a man and his wife (wives), between a man and his children, and between a man and his brother (s) or sister (s) ... The second section analyses different themes within the tales, among which we find cosmogony, magic, customs, initiation, rituals, conflicts between generations, conflict resolution, ect. The fourth chapter deals with the structure of the NKUNDO-MONGO tales. The work by Denise Paulme on the morphology of African tales was our principal source of inspiration in this matter. The fifth, and the last chapter, describes the impact of modernization on the NKUNDOMONGO folktales. In conclusion, we evaluate the importance of these little know folktales of the NKUNDOMONGO tribe in the understanding and preservation of tribal rules.

Malcohn de Chazal (1902-1981) is little known abroad and misunderstood by his compatriots in Mauritius. Man of letters and theatre, poet and painter, sometime philosopher and prolific columnist, Chazal was an agricultural engineer by training but worked for the telecommunications department. This thesis attempts to synthesise these multiple incarnations by putting together the salient aspects of his literary biography and the extensive detailed of his bibliography in particular : published books, newspaper and journal articles, book reviews, prefaces, unpublished works, correspondence, radio and television programmes. This task was complicated by an author who was at the same time egocentric and fiercely timid: Yet it fills a sizeable void in this field of study. The response of his critics in books and articles forms the second half of the bibliography; prefaces, critical books, academic works, -dictionary entries, catalogues and prefaces of exhibitions, and economic tracts. A renewed interest in Chazal in Mauritius and in France has relaunched study of the author, and encouraged publishers to reprint long forgotten works. It is hoped that this thesis will become a powerful research tool with its succinct biography, and in particular because of its complete bibliography. The newspaper and journal articles are classified chronologically by title and by alphabetical order of the newspaper or journal. A thematic classification of Chazal's articles with accompanying notes, as well as purely chronological classifications of all newspaper and journal articles facilitate the work of the researcher. The appendices are further augmented by a list of articles whose details have not been checked; an inventory of published works and articles of Chazal in mauritian archives and libraries (including useful information on these places); a list of authors and. books cited in Chazal's articles; a lexicon of titles, and names of people and places in Mauritius. This is followed by a detailed list of sources used in this thesis. The practical aspects of this study must be emphasised : from its presentation of Chazal's works to that of his critics, from its summary of Chazal studies to its projections of what still needs to be done. The confused reader will have a point of reference, and the initiated researcher will find a more useful guide within these pages than what is currently available. The study reflects this author's own difficulties, and tries to lighten the load of others by resolving a goo4 number of these issues. The thesis underlines Chazal's literary output by providing an accessible biography and a classified bibliography, while merely sketching his artistic career. The ultimate goal is to render author and work more accessible. While we are made aware of the paucity of research, the road ahead is rich with unexplored topics of study.

One of the main reasons, for the Senegalese author Sembene Ousmane's prominence in African literature of French expression is that he, more than any other male African author, has sought to give to the female characters in his literary works an important role in African Society. This thesis analyses the female characters in Sembene's literary works with the aim of evaluating their importance, the author's attitude towards them and finally Sembene's feminism. The first five chapters analyse the female characters in different contexts, namely marriage, the family, work, politics and religion. the sixth chapter studies the usually avoided subject of the dissolute woman. The last chapter deals with the place given to women in Sembene's writing, ie. the comparison between the number of male and female characters and the narrative techniques which he utilizes to characterize the latter.

This study aims to examine the ways in which memory is represented in Auschwitz survivor, Charlotte Delbo's literary trilogy, Auschwitz et Apres, (Auschwitz and After) (1970a;1970b;1971). Its examination of memory is premised on the understanding of survivor narrative as testimonial narrative and testimony as the telling of the memory of historical events which strain or exceed conventional frameworks of representation. As such, the aim of this study is to demonstrate the way that representations of memory of a limit-experience problematise the certainty of its own testimonial transmission. By attempting to theorise the dynamics of narrating personal memory and then by analysing key extracts in each volume of the trilogy, this examination attempts to demonstrate how the event of the Holocaust, the difficulty of being a survivor and an unwilling reception of the survivor's story are collectively implicated in the way that memory contests its own representation. By examining the discontinuities of memory, this study intends to show how, in very different ways, the silences and ruptures of memory which are produced in these readings are a remembering of a different form. Bibliography: pages 138-150.