Version remaniée de la thèse de doctorat de 3ème cycle en Littérature négro-africaine, Université de Yaoundé I (Cameroun), 1994.

Mongo Beti is the pseudonym of one Alexandre Biyidi, a novelist from the ex-French Cameroun, who wrote the body of his work in the 1950s, before his country gained its independence. His four novels, Ville Cruelle, Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba, Mission Terminee, and Le Roi Miracule together constitute a detailed portrait of life in the Cameroun under colonial rule. In this thesis I have attempted to set forth as clearly as possible Beti's opinions on the actions and philosophies of colonial administrator and Christian missionary alike, and on the effects which these have had upon his fellow-Camerounians. To analyse the justice of his opinions, I have referred to contemporary and more recent criticism of these two facets of Europe's "African adventure." It is my contention that, though mordant in his satire of the Christian religion in Africa, though angrily critical of colonialism's "civilising mission", Beti is never less than honest in his evaluation. Equally honest are his portrayals of his fellow-Africans, for he does not succumb to the temptation to present them as more noble or long-suffering, or as, in any way, other than they are. I have commented upon the intrinsic worth of the novels themselves, and have attempted, briefly, to suggest the position and importance of Beti's brand of social realism in the history of the African novel, indicating my reasons for believing that his work still has relevance today. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Mongo Beti (1932-2001), romancier, pamphletaire et journaliste, a abondamment enchaine un discours continu sur certaines questions socio-politiques portant sur la vie au Cameroun. II nous a fait un legs durable de son oeuvre romanesque qui s'etend de l'ere coloniale jusqu'au debut du XXIe siecle, et depeint de facon dynamique revolution socio-historique de son pays natal. Le renouvellement de son style romanesque dans la realisation de Trop de soleil tue I'amour (1999) et de Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000), ses deux derniers romans, merite un examen des modifications narratives et de leurs effets par rapport a la forme narrative de ses romans precedents. Bien que nous demontrions une evolution romanesque possible en comparant quelques-uns de ses romans contestataires, a savoir Ville cruelle (1954), Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (1956) et Mission terminee (1957), avec Trop de soleil tue I'amour et Branlebas en noir et blanc, nous decouvrirons egalement, du point de vue narratologique, que Beti a conserve dans une certaine mesure les fonctions premieres accordees a ses narrateurs. Afin de degager des changements identifiables, cette etude reposera sur l'approche narratologique edifiee par Gerard Genette dans Figures III (1972). Nous examinerons en particulier la perceptibilite de la presence du narrateur betien, ses rapports avec le recit et avec l'histoire et la facon dont certains aspects de Pinstance narrative se modifient d'un recit a 1'autre. Nous releverons ainsi de notre corpus des eloignements et des rapprochements entre les narrateurs autodiegetique, homodiegetique et heterodiegetique betiens, quant a leur situation narrative et leurs fonctions. Selon l'approche adoptee, nous verrons que Beti manipule les outils de la narration pour transmettre, sous forme d'un discours romanesque impressionnant, ses nombreuses preoccupations des conditions socio-politiques (neo)coloniales contemporaines. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

Texte remanié de: Thèse--Lettres--Paris VII, 1984. / Bibliogr. p. 373-387.

Texte remanié de: Thèse de doctorat--Littérature négro-africaine--Yaoundé--Université de Yaoundé I. / Bibliogr.p. 259-270.

This dissertation focuses on the works of two well-known African Francophone novelists, Ahmadou Kourouma from the Ivory Coast and Mongo Beti from Cameroon. The objective of this study is to look at the influences of African oral traditions and analyze the literary transposition of semantic structures from African languages and cultures into the French language. I utilize Chantal Zabus' explanations of how the process of indigenization leads to relexification, the process by which the authors seek to display their linguistic innovation by attempting to merge their local African languages with the French language. Chapter one introduces the language policies in the Ivory Coast and Cameroon during the colonization and in the post-colonial Africa. It establishes the relationship between the dominant European languages and the local African languages and examines the question of rehabilitation of the African languages. Chapter two examines the impact of the African oral traditions and the use of orality as a writing strategy. Chapter three aims to analyze the process whereby words of African local languages and cultures are semantically incorporated through Les Soleils des Indépendances (1968) and Allah n'est pas oblige (2000) by Ahmadou Kourouma, and Ville cruelle (1954) and Branle-bas en noir et blanc (2000) by Mongo Beti. Chapter four examines the use of stylistic features associated with local African languages by comparing the earlier works of the two authors with their later literary production in order to establish whether there is continuity or not in their writing style.

L’étude porte sur le rapport entre la littérature et l’histoire, plus précisément sur la récupération de l’histoire en littérature. En effet, au regard de certaines fictions on constate que le fait historique vient nourrir le contenu des textes. En d’autres termes, le fait historique devient un réservoir dans lequel les écrivains vont puiser la matière de leurs œuvres. Toutefois si on s’accorde sur le principe que le texte littéraire puise dans l’histoire, il est évident que la matière historique peut être exploitée à des fins diverses. Ainsi on peut s’interroger sur les motivations des auteurs qui puisent dans le passé.On rapportera cette problématique à deux écrivains africains : Mongo Beti et Patrice Nganang. On s’interrogera sur les effets escomptés par ces auteurs qui ont recours à l’histoire. L’exploration du passé, qui leur permet de se positionner, est un prétexte, un moyen pour eux de se forger une nouvelle conscience. Dans leurs œuvres, la dimension historique sert à formuler des approches sociopolitiques, à critiquer l’ordre établi, à affirmer le rôle et la place de l’écrivain dans le champ littéraire. C’est leur statut d’écrivain qui est ainsi redéfini. / The study focuses on the relationship between literature and history, specifically on the recovery of literature in history. Indeed, under certain fictions shows that the historical fact comes to feed the contents of the texts. In other words, the historical fact is a reservoir in which writers will draw material from their works. However if there is agreement on the principle that the literary text draws from history, it is clear that the historical material can be exploited for various purposes. So one wonders about the motives of the authors that tap into the past.We bring this issue to two African writers: Mongo Beti and Patrice Nganang. We will discuss the expected effects by these authors that use history. The exploration of the past, enabling them to position itself, is a pretext, a way for them to forge a new consciousness. In their works, the historical dimension is used to formulate socio-political approaches to criticize the established order, to affirm the role and place of the writer in the literary field. It is their status as a writer who is redefined.

Following their independence in the 1960s the new governments of such French-speaking, African nations as Togo, Ivory Coast, Congo and Chad (to name only few), for the most part embraced policies that were authoritarian. A direct upshot socially of the lack of free speech imposed by certain African regimes was the migration of a large number of intellectuals from the black continent, yearning to rediscover their voices in more developed, democratic countries. Many, while living in exile, turned to writing or continued to write in such a way that the painful stories of the Africa they left behind could unfold before the eyes of the larger world and somehow bring a positive change to the leadership in Africa. One of these committed Francophone African writers of the Diaspora was Mongo Béti. In my dissertation, I explore the effects of an exile’s life on this writer's journalistic work by a careful analysis of the articles he published from 1978 to 1991 in the bimonthly review, "Peuples noirs, peuples africains", which he co-founded with his wife, Odile Tobner. My approach is to focus on the dual causality in Béti’s literary efforts through a better acquaintance with his review: the migratory factor that conveys, on the one hand, the notion of cultural integration and the creative spirit in perpetual exile and, on the other hand, the neocolonial factor that constantly connects the protagonist to his origins as he radically refutes poor governance and dictatorship in his home country and in the so-called independent francophone Africa, or to the ex-colonizer reluctant to give up its ill-fated 'mission civilisatrice'. Through later research, I hope to develop my work by thematically analyzing three formative periods of the author's life: the period before his exile, the time during his thirty two years of exile, and the period after his exile, in order to better contextualize factors of influence and their varying degree over time in his writing, both journalistic and novelistic.

The objectives of this investigation have been to characterize black gram (Phaseolus Mongo L.) and rice (Oryza sativa L.) proteins and to study changes in their nutritional value due to fermentation. black gram, the legume chosen for this work, is one of the most important legume crops throughout a large part of the tropics. The protein content of 60 mesh, dehydrated, defatted black gram meal was 28.5 percent. Sodium carbonate (0.5- 1.0 percent), tetra-sodium pyrophosphate (0.5 percent), and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) (0.5-5 percent) proved to be the potential protein solubilizers as they extracted more than 76 grams of Lowry's protein per 100 grams Kjeldahl protein. On the considerations of contaminating residue in the final product and disruption of native structure of the proteins, these chemical agents were unsuitable. Sodium sulfate at the 10 percent level was judged to be the best protein solubilizer. Proteins separated on polyacrylamide gel using a phenol-acetic acid-mercaptoethanol-urea (PAMU) system were run on the flat bed gel containing SDS. The proteins were separated in 13 constituents and the molecular weights of the major ones were 140,000 and 55,000. Solubilized proteins contained 81 percent globulins, 13 percent albumins, 4 percent prolamins, and 2 percent glutelins . Sulfur containing amino acids and threonine were deficient in total proteins xv of the seeds with 27. 6 and 78.8 as their respective chemical scores . Chemical scores of the albumin, globulin, prolamin, and glutelin fractions were 64, 0, 56, and 70.7, respectively. The predicted biological values in human nutrition varied from O for globulins to 110 for glutelins, and was 14.9 for total proteins in the seeds. The constituents of the protein fractions were isoelectrically focused in the acidic pH range with the exception of two globulins for which the isoelectric points were 8.42 and 8.65. The trypsin inhibitor from black gram was isolated using affinity chromatography gel with 19. 5 fold purification. The inhibitor had 75 amino acid residues and contained one disulfide bridge. Chemical studies assigned an important role for the hydrogen bonds and demonstrated vital importance of the disulfide bridge in retaining the inhibiting activity. The inhibitor was stable and retained 35 percent of the activity when heated at 100°C for 60 minutes at pH 11. Chemical modification of amino acid residues suggested the involvement of lysine and arginine residues at the active site of the inhibitor. Lysine and arginine moieties at the active site have been proposed to be present as alanyllysine and histidylarginine. Inhib i tion of bovine pancreatic trypsin by the inhibitor was kinetically studied . The kinetic constants Km and Vm ax were 2.7 x l0- 5M and 6 x l0 - 3M/min, respectively. The dissociation constant for the enzyme-inhibitor complex (Ki) was 4 x l0- 7M, whereas that for the enzyme-inhibitor-substrate complex (K. 1 , ) was 1.89 x l0- 6M. The inhibition was a mixture of partial competitive and pure-noncompetitive systems. Rice and black gram form the integral parts of a fermented snack food of the Indian subcontinent~idli. Amino acid composition of black gram and rice were complementary. Leucine, lysine, and sulfur containing amino acids were the most limiting amino acids in rice with 65. 1, 66.3, and 67.9 as their respective scores. The estimates of biological values of rice proteins in human nutrition qualified albumins as superior and prolamins as inferior proteins. The PAMUsy stem in polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis was more efficient in resolving protein subunits than the SOS gel system. The PAMUsy stem was not sensitive to the ionic strength of the sample. Mobilities of rice and black gram proteins in SOS and PAMUsy stems were based on the related parameters. In the PAMUsy stem, the mobilities of most proteins seemed to depend on their molecular size. The PAMUsy stem on gel electrophoresis was judged superior to the SOS system. Fermentation of the black gram-rice blend was kinetically studied for changes in physicochemical characteristics and nutritional functionality. Trypsin inhibiting activity was unaffected, but chymotrypsin inhibiting activity was reduced to 3 percent after 20 hours fermentation , Significant increases were noted in the contents of sulfur containing amino acids during fermentation . These amino acids seemed to be bioavailable. In vitro digestion with pepsin and pancreatin indicated improvement in digestibility of proteins after fermentation. The digestibility was further enhanced by steaming.

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