La façon dont le personnage de Victoire dans Victoire, les saveurs et les mots, de Maryse Condé est représenté et ce qui la rend complexe et énigmatique est l’objet de cette étude. A travers ce roman, Maryse Condé retrace la vie de sa grand-mère, qu’elle n’a pas connue. Depuis son enfance elle a décidé de se documenter sur Victoire Quidal et d’écrire un livre sur elle. La méthode utilisée dans ce mémoire est double à la fois narratologique et biographique. En effet la narratrice alterne les points de vue sur Victoire ce qui fait qu’elle est vue soit de l’extérieur par la société de façon très critique, soit de l’intérieur, perspective qui permet d’avoir une tout autre vision de Victoire. Victoire est aussi vue du point de vue d’autres personnages comme celui de sa fille Jeanne. Le mémoire traite de la personnalité de Victoire et de sa manière d’être avec les hommes, avec sa fille, au travail et montre qu’elle est finalement plus insoumise que soumise et que c’est un personnage complexe et intéressant. / The way the character Victoire in the novel Victoire : my mother’s mother is represented and what makes her complex and enigmatic is the purpose of this study. In this novel, Maryse Condé writes about her grandmother whom she has never met. Since early childhood she has decided to document herself about Victoire Quidal and to write a book about her. The method used in the thesis is double, one method is narratological and the other one is biographical. The narrator switches between different points of view on Victoire, she is sometimes seen from an external point of view by the society, which is very critical, she is also seen internally which gives a very different vision of the character. The character is also seen through other characters, such as her daughter Jeanne. The aim of this thesis is to show Victoire’s personality, to describe the way she is with men, with her daughter, at work and show that she is much more rebellious than she is submissive and that she is a complex and interesting character.

This thesis explores the problem of self-empowerment for the French Caribbean Black woman as presented in the novels Moi, Tituba, sorcière...Noire de Salem and Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle. The respective authors, Maryse Condé and Simone Schwarz- Bart, use fiction to convey the plight of women in the French Caribbean. They successfully create characters who refuse marginalization imposed by their patriarchal and oppressive societies. Condé’s novel, set in the 17th century first in Barbados, and then in Puritan New England depicts the challenges Tituba overcomes in reaching liberation. Schwarz-Bart presents the story of Télumée, set in Guadeloupe at the beginning of the 20th century. My study focuses specifically on the characters of Tituba and Télumée to show ways that they thwart the dominant social structures and norms that seek to disempower them. It reveals ways that Condé and Schwarz-Bart make use of literature to reverse European perceptions of gender and race. Consequently, the literary fictions they create suggest possible ways of escaping marginalization and refusing racial and gendered subjugation. / Master of Arts

This thesis analyses two novels taking place in the Caribbean context, Traversée de la mangrove (1989), written by Maryse Condé, and Solibo Magnifique (1988), written by Patrick Chamoiseau. Focus is on the themes of identity and resistance and how these themes are represented and problematised in the novels. Some narrative aspects are also given attention, such as how the use of different narrative techniques mirrors the themes in the novels. Objecting to the French/European obsession with rationality, transparency and linearity, the novels propose other ways of expressing identity as well as writing literature. The French language, associated with Western and colonial discourses and with the ideals of Enlightenment, is used as a tool to dominate and suppress others. Identity is described in terms of rhizomatic relationships and diversity, rather than as stable entities. Opacity is a way of resisting the violence of rational descriptions and the linear, causal narrations. By refusing to tell all, and by claiming that certain things cannot be explained in rational ways, the novels problematise the act of representing and insist upon complexity. The penchant for opacity is reflected in the narration for example in the tendency to pose questions rather than provide answers for the reader.

In La Migration des coeurs, Maryse Condé rewrites Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights in a Caribbean context. Through its intertextual connection to Brontë's novel, Condé's text can be read in relation to Wuthering Heights according to the rhizomatic structure posited by Deleuze and Guattari, and further employed by Édouard Glissant in his Poétique de la Relation. The rhizome allows a comparison that resists a hierarchical comparison of the texts, and permits dialog and mutual influence between the two novels. Condé's critics, reinforcing this intertextual relation, have rarely considered La Migration des coeurs independently of Brontë's Wuthering Heights. However Windward Heights, Richard Philcox's English translation of Condé's novel, has not been previously considered worthy of a place in the rhizome. As a rewriting of Condé's own rewriting, Philcox's translation merits analysis in relation to the other two novels. This study will examine the nature of translation and rewriting in a postcolonial context. Primarily focusing on La Migration des coeurs, it will show how Condé uses the latent imperialist frame of Wuthering Heights to expose social inequalities in Guadeloupe, and how Philcox communicates this critique back to the English metropolis in Windward Heights.

In this essay I have read the novels Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys 1966), Desirada (Maryse Condé 1997) and Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino 1972) through Édouard Glissant’s notion of the primary scene in Philosophie de la relation. Poésie en étendue. I have examined how the primary scene can be seen as a political/an aesthetical strategy in the three novels. This was done in order to question the blunted tool of the notion of the identity, which is often considered in studies regarding ”postcolonial novels”. Invisible Cities is not belonging in this tradition, the method I used was ”The travelling theory” of Edward W. Saïd that proposes to let theories travel through different fields instead of trying to understand their ”original” meaning. I compared these novels in accordance to Glissants theory of questioning the notion of origins. The analysis compares how the novels depending on in wich tradition they have been read is being seen with different eyes. Novels interpreted as ”postcolonial novels” are usually read as a symptom of lack of origin. Whereas the protagonist tryes to understand the loss of identity. Glissants theory eases the analysis to reach other possible meanings of the novels, where they both meet and differs. My results indicate that The Wide Sargasso Sea and Desirada create a complex relation to time and space, where the primary scenes in these novels are steeped through different time levels. The two novels present a new way to understand time that rejects historicity, create new tools for thinking and evaluates new strategies to exist in the world, without origins in the classical meaning; Rhys through her imagery and Condé through her weave of times. The same goes for Invicible Cities, only though Venice the primal scene in the novel stays the center of interest, and even though borders of time and space are being questioned, the novel tends to make Venice the guzzling synthesis. / Édouard Glissant, Jean Rhys, Maryse Condé, Italo Calvino, Édward W. Saïd, Mary Lou Emery, Spivak.

Submitted by Fabiano Vassallo (fabianovassallo2127@gmail.com) on 2017-05-09T19:01:48Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Tese janeiro 2017 pronta.pdf: 1972713 bytes, checksum: f7eb7a75eb343405aeb9802405a17137 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Josimara Dias Brumatti (bcgdigital@ndc.uff.br) on 2017-06-06T14:56:27Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Tese janeiro 2017 pronta.pdf: 1972713 bytes, checksum: f7eb7a75eb343405aeb9802405a17137 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-06T14:56:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Tese janeiro 2017 pronta.pdf: 1972713 bytes, checksum: f7eb7a75eb343405aeb9802405a17137 (MD5) / Instituto Federal Fluminense, Diretoria de Ensino, Campos dos Goytacazes, RJ / Esta tese se propõe a discutir em que medida a literatura constitui um viés de resgate memorial de um indivíduo e, ao mesmo tempo, da sociedade em que se insere. Também pretende mostrar como as leituras constituem uma genealogia literária e colaboram para a formação da identidade de leitores e escritores. Para tal, serão consideradas quatro obras da escritora antilhana Maryse Condé: Le coeur à rire et à pleurer- souvenirs de mon enfance (1999), Victoire, les saveurs et les mots (2006), La vie sans fards (2012) e Mets et merveilles (2015). Entre Maryse Condé e seu leitor, que entra (ou não) no jogo proposto pela narrativa autobiográfica, estabelece-se uma espécie de “pacto” entre quem escreve e quem lê: de um lado, tem-se a autora, desejosa de escrever, de ser lida e reconhecida, que se compromete a dizer a (sua) verdade, esperando, em troca, um comprometimento afetivo por parte do leitor; do outro lado, encontra-se o leitor que, perante as vivências partilhadas com a narradora, dificilmente permanecerá incólume, manifestando reações diversas (da adesão à rejeição, da identificação ao distanciamento), podendo mesmo colocar-se a si próprio em causa. Esse jogo, aliás, é proposto em todo texto literário, mas no caso da narrativa autobiográfica, a cooperação textual é ainda mais premente, já que o sucesso da sua recepção depende da predisposição do leitor para pactuar com uma lógica discursiva que cria uma teia narrativa de ilusões, que parece ser uma coisa, mas que, na realidade, pode ser muitas outras. A escritora antilhana, nesses relatos, recorda, escreve e lê o passado, o que implica necessariamente a evocação de uma ausência recuperada pelo poder das palavras através da memória ou da imaginação transfiguradoras. Nesse sentido, os relatos (auto) biográficos de Condé são narrativas que representam um desafio face ao esquecimento e às traições da memória, uma possibilidade face às dificuldades enfrentadas na busca do autoconhecimento e uma confirmação das capacidades da linguagem para recuperar e recriar vivências e mundos possíveis. Eles constituem, afinal, um contributo literário para a busca de respostas em torno das inúmeras questões sobre a autobiografia, seus modos de fazer e seus modos de ler, sugestões de receitas (sempre mutáveis, é claro) sobre os modos possíveis de se contar a própria vida, sempre um compósito da vida dos seus, dos lugares pelos quais passou e também de suas leituras e incontáveis interpretações / Cette thèse se propose à discuter dans quelle mesure la littérature constitue un moyen de réappropriation mémorielle de l’individu ainsi que de la société dans laquelle il est inséré. Elle a également l'intention de montrer comment les lectures sont une généalogie littéraire et collaborent pour la formation de l'identité de lecteurs et d'écrivains. Quatre ouvrages de l'écrivaine antillaise Maryse Condé seront analysés: Le coeur à rire et à pleurer- souvenirs de mon enfance (1999), Victoire, les saveurs et les mots (2006), La vie sans fards (2012) et Mets et merveilles (2015). Entre Maryse Condé et son lecteur, qui entre (ou non) dans le jeu proposé par le récit autobiographique, se met en place une sorte de «pacte» entre celui qui écrit et celui qui lit: d'une part, nous avons l'auteur, désireux d'écrire, d'être lu et reconnu, qui se charge de dire (sa) vérité, en attendant, en échange, un engagement émotionnel du lecteur; d'autre part, nous trouvons le lecteur qui, vis-à-vis des expériences partagées avec le narrateur, ne pourra pas demeurer indemne, exprimant des réactions diverses (de l’adhésion au rejet, de l’identification à la distance) il peut même se remettre en question. Ce jeu est, d'ailleurs, présent dans tous les textes littéraires, mais dans le cas du récit autobiographique, la coopération textuelle est encore plus importante, puisque le succès de sa réception dépend de la volonté du lecteur de collaborer avec une logique discursive qui crée un tissu narratif d’illusions, qui paraît quelque chose, mais en fait, peut être beaucoup d'autres. L'écrivaine antillaise, dans ces récits, se souvient, écrit et lit le passé qui implique nécessairement l'évocation d'une absence récupérée par le pouvoir des mots par la mémoire ou l'imagination qui transfigurent. Dans ce sens, les rapports (auto) biographiques de Condé sont des récits qui représentent un défi contre l'oubli et les trahisons de la mémoire, une possibilité face aux difficultés de l'auto-recherche et la confirmation des capacités de la langue pour récupérer et reconstruire des expériences et des mondes possibles. Ils sont, après tout, une contribution littéraire à la recherche de réponses sur les nombreuses questions concernant l'autobiographie, les façons de faire et les manières de lire, des suggestions de recettes (toujours mouvantes, bien sûr) sur comment l’on peut raconter sa propre vie, toujours un composite de la vie des autres, des lieux parcourus et aussi de lectures et des innombrables interprétations

Dans le cadre de cette thèse, nous nous intéressons aux représentations de la sorcière dans la littérature d’inspiration historique à partir des années 1970. Nous analysons la construction de cette figure protéiforme et les métamorphoses qu’elle connaît dans l’imaginaire social lors des dernières décennies du XXe siècle. Plus précisément, nous examinons les différentes facettes de la sorcière, telles qu’elles apparaissent dans quatre romans francophones d’inspiration historique, en relation avec les discours historiques, féministes et postcoloniaux, et les autres productions culturelles de la même période. En étudiant les interactions entre les représentations de la sorcière et d’autres œuvres, travaux et tendances de l’époque, notre thèse met en lumière les problématiques abordées à travers cette figure dans les textes littéraires. La figure de la sorcière reprend notamment des enjeux qui marquent les dernières décennies du XXe siècle, tels la place des femmes et des cultures minoritaires dans la société, la représentation du corps féminin, le recul des religions traditionnelles et l’écriture de l’Histoire. Au moyen des approches sociocritique et intertextuelle, nous explorons ces enjeux et analysons la façon dont les œuvres développent ou prolongent ces réflexions en abordant la figure de la sorcière. De manière à pouvoir tracer l’évolution de la figure et des questions qui lui sont liées, la thèse est divisée en trois parties, représentant chacune une décennie distincte. Après un préambule brossant un tableau de l’imaginaire de la sorcière au début des années 1970, une première partie se concentre sur la construction de la figure de la sorcière dans les romans Les Enfants du sabbat d’Anne Hébert et La Fontaine obscure de Raymond Jean, parus lors de la décennie 1970. Une deuxième partie, centrée sur la décennie 1980, se penche sur le roman Moi, Tituba sorcière... de Maryse Condé. Enfin, une troisième partie s’intéresse au roman Instruments des ténèbres de Nancy Huston, publié pendant les années 1990. En combinant différentes approches, cette thèse tend à mieux comprendre la fonction de la sorcière dans la littérature et les idées qui lui sont associées dans l’imaginaire social à partir de 1970.

“Telling Otherwise: Rewriting History, Gender, and Genre in Africa and the African Diaspora” examines counter-discursive postcolonial rewritings. In my first chapter, “Re-Writing the Canon,” I examine two works that rewrite canonical texts from the European tradition, Jean Rhys’s retelling of the life of Jane Eyre’s Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea and Maryse Condé’s relocation of Wuthering Heights to the Caribbean in La migration des coeurs. In this chapter, I contend that re-writing functions not only as a response, as a “writing back” to the canon, but as a creative appropriation of and critical engagement with the canonical text and its worldview. My second chapter, “Re-Storying the Past,” examines fictional works that rewrite events from the historical past. The works that I study in this chapter are Assia Djebar’s recuperation of Algerian women’s resistance to French colonization in L’amour, la fantasia and Edwidge Danticat’s efforts to reconstruct the 1937 massacre of Haitians under Trujillo in The Farming of Bones. In my third chapter, “Re-Voicing Slavery,” I take for my subject neo-slave narratives that build on and revise the slave narrative genre of the late eighteenth- through early twentieth- centuries. The two works that I examine in this chapter are Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose and the poem sequence Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip, based on the 1781 murder of Africans aboard the slave ship Zong. My fourth chapter, “Re-Membering Gender,” examines texts that foreground the processes of re-writing and re-telling, both thematically and structurally, so as to draw attention to the ways in which discourses and identities are constructed. In their attempts to counter masculinist discourses, these works seek to re-inscribe gender into these discourses, a process of re-membering that engenders a radical deconstruction of fixed notions of identity. The works that I read in this chapter include Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil, which privileges the feminine and the multiple in opposition to patriarchal notions of single origins and authoritative narrative voices and Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la Mangrove, which rewrites Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel Solibo Magnifique so as to critique the exclusive nature of Caribbean identity in his notion of créolité. / text

El Caribe ha sido reconocido por considerarse una pluralidad de espacios que simultáneamente son solo uno. Contrario al contexto de su fragmentada geografía, su segregada historia colonial y su diversidad racial y lingüística, los intelectuales caribeños han establecido puentes de unidad cultural con la intención de configurar una identidad pan-caribeña. Por consiguiente, los ensayistas del siglo XX se enfrentan a la necesidad de examinar críticamente los factores que formulan sus respectivas identidades, en contraste con aquellas tradicionalmente impuestas bajo el discurso colonial y metropolitano. Desde el tercer cuarto del siglo, pensadores como Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969), Fidel Castro (1926-), George Lamming (1927-), Kamau Brathwaite (1930-), Juan I. Jiménes-Grullón (1903-1983), Hubert Devonish (1953-), Edouard Glissant (1928-2011), Antonio Benítez-Rojo (1931-2005), Arcadio Díaz Quiñones y Maryse Condé (1937-), entre otros, cuestionan el sistema colonial, los procesos étnicos y las propuestas lingüísticas, relacionándolos con conceptos tales como la hibridez, el sincretismo, la transculturación y la heterogeneidad. Estas teorías culturales, de alguna manera, reescriben ideas antecedentes en reacción a discursos hegemónicos previos como consecuencia de los cambios políticos que trajeron las guerras de independencia en América Latina durante el siglo XIX. En mi tesis demuestro que estos planteamientos delinean un mapa de modelos epistemológicos de la cultura del Caribe. Para indicar que estas propuestas constituyen metáforas que muestran una consciencia cultural, las proposiciones acerca de la cultura de Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) y Hayden White (1928-) sirven como marco teórico apropiado. Así, a través de las representaciones literarias ensayísticas de los modelos metafóricos de la cultura caribeña, este trabajo redefine algunos aspectos importantes de la identidad cultural vis a vis la mirada parcial que usualmente se utiliza para estudiar el archipiélago antillano. Igualmente, incluso aunque estos modelos proponen una representación metafórica de la cultura pan-caribeña, la construcción de un modelo del Caribe puede ser utilizado en otras regiones y espacios culturales en el contexto de la globalización, ya que elucida una gnoseología cultural que sirve para describir distintas realidades globales.

This study analyzes the experience of alienation from family and culture as portrayed in the personal narratives of francophone women. The authors appearing in this study are Assia Djebar and Marie Cardinal, from Algeria, Mariama Bâ and Ken Bugul, from Senegal, Marguerite Duras and Kim Lefèvre, from Vietnam, Calixthe Beyala, from Cameroon, Gabrielle Roy, from Canada, and Maryse Condé, from Guadeloupe. Alienation is deconstructed into the domains of blood, money, land, religion, education and history. The authors’ experiences of alienation in each domain are classified according to severity and cultural normativity. The study seeks to determine the manner in which alienation manifests in each domain, and to identify factors which aid or hinder recovery. Alienation in the domain of blood occurs as a result of warfare, illness, racism, ancestral trauma, and the rites of passage of menarche, loss of virginity, and menopause. Money-related alienation is linked to endemic classism, often caused by colonial influence. The authors experienced varying degrees of economic vulnerability to men, depending upon cultural and familial norms. Colonialism, warfare and environmental depending upon cultural and familial norms. Colonialism, warfare and environmental degradation all contribute to alienation in the domain of land. Women were found to be more susceptible to alienation in the domain of religion due to patriarchal religious constructs. In the domain of education, it was found that some alienation is inevitable for all students. Despite its inherent drawbacks, education provides tools for empowerment which are crucial for overcoming alienation. Alienation in the domain of history was found to hinder recovery due to infiltration of past trauma into the present, while empowerment in this domain fosters optimism and future-oriented thinking. Each domain offers opportunities for empowerment, and it is necessary to work within the domains to create a safe haven for recovery. Eight of the nine authors experienced at least a partial recovery from alienation. This was accomplished via cathartic release of negative emotions. Catharsis is achieved by shedding tears, talking, or writing about the negative experiences. The personal narrative was found to be especially helpful in promoting healing both for the author and the reading audience. / Classics and World Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (French)