Notre travail naît d'une ambition : proposer une définition du réel merveilleux, et déterminer à cette fin s'il s'agit d'un genre littéraire, ou plutôt d'un ensemble de textes unis par un mode de rapport au monde. A cet effet, nous interrogeons les textes de trois auteurs majeurs du réel merveilleux caraïbe : du cubain Alejo Carpentier, de l'Haïtien René Depestre et du Colombien Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Notre démarche s'intéresse à la visée littéraire du réel merveilleux comme à sa visée anthropologique. Nous cherchons à déterminer chez ces trois auteurs la part du fantastique et la part du merveilleux, souvent en conflit dans leurs textes. Mais nous mettons aussi en lumière les enjeux historiques et culturels de leur écriture. De notre étude, il ressort que le réel merveilleux exprime, à travers des conflits narratifs, les contradictions qui parcourent le monde caraïbe, partagé entre les déchirures de l'Histoire, et l'utopie du Mythe. D'une part il ouvre sur un monde terrifiant : chaos tellurique où se désagrègent les repères spatio-temporels, hantise de la figure du métis, perception enfin d'une histoire pressentie comme un monstre. D'autre part, il ouvre sur ses propres mythes, qui sont souvent des mythes européens revisités : perception cosmique de l'univers, mythologie euphorique du métissage, réconciliation de l'homme avec le monde par une écriture qui conjugue poésie et carnavalesque. Qu'est-ce que donc que le réel merveilleux ? Non pas un genre littéraire ni une esthétique qui se confinerait dans "un réalisme magique" empreint d'artifice, mais plutôt une expression littéraire propre à l'Amérique latine et notamment aux Caraïbes, qui traduit les terreurs comme les aspirations d'une culture et développe sa quête identitaire aux confins de l'Histoire et du Mythe.

This thesis project explores the connection between Cuban identity and the twentieth-century Neobaroque. The paper approaches the Neobaroque as a concept that reoriginates or "refracts" culture, implying a relationship between Baroque forms and post-colonial Latin America that creates a transformation of cultural expression. Furthermore, the Neobaroque is seen relating to questions of cultural identity, post-colonialism, transculturation, mestizaje, and Latin American modernity. The Neobaroque's relevancy with Cuba is stipulated in twentieth-century writings of three Cuban authors known as the Cuban triumvirate: José Lezama Lima, Alejo Carpentier, and Severo Sarduy. Similar themes of these writers concerning the Neobaroque's connection with the urban environment of Havana as well as connections to José Martí's writing Nuestra América are highlighted as key components connecting the Neobaroque with Cuban culture. / Graduate / 0336 / 0626 / scruiksh@uvic.ca

(in English) This thesis focuses on the theme of the destruction of a world in the Hispanic American literature. Its principal part is a detailed analysis of the novels The Villagers, written by the Ecuadorian author Jorge Icaza, and The Kingdom of this World, written by the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier. Additional parts of the thesis are a concise outline of significant literary works which include the theme of the destruction of a world and a brief corpus analysis. The analysis compares the frequency of the usage of several words which are connected with the theme in the Hispanic American and Spanish literature. The thesis aims to answer the following questions: Is the theme of the destruction of a world characteristic for the Hispanic American literature? In which forms does it occur? How is the theme demonstrated in the literary works, and what are its features? The thesis also examines the relation between the Hispanic American reality and the presence of the theme in the writings of the authors born in that part of the World. The relation between the analysed literary works and the historical background of the period in which it was written is important for the theses as well as selected facts of the life stories of the authors. To a certain extent, it determined their literary output.

The diploma thesis "The Return of the Baroque in Hispano-American Novel of the 20th Century - Asturias, Carpentier, Roa Bastos" examines Baroque motifs and principles in the modern 20th century Hispanic-American novel. It explains how these traits alter in contrast to the historical Baroque, how they are modified or what other functions they acquire. An attempt was made to critically rethink and re-evaluate the literary theories dealing with the reappearance of the Baroque in Hispanic America, as we consider their approach to be generalising and reductive. The interpretative method is based on Josef Vojvodík's Povrch, skrytost a ambivalence and namely how it addresses the manner in which the Baroque, Mannerism and avant-garde relate to one another. A characterisation of the American Baroque as such has been drafted and an attempt to capture the differences between the European Baroque has been made. The essayistic work of Alejo Carpentier is treated with an emphasis on the relationship of the (Neo)Baroque and magic realism. Carpentier wrongly attributes to the continent what he installs through his own optics without realising that such an approach might be itself described as being Baroque. The interpretative part provides a linguistic, thematic and motivic analysis of Baroque traits in a choice...