Thesis advisor: Kevin Newmark / This thesis focuses on flora as metaphors and representations of identity in Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle (1972), Xavier Orville’s Délice et le fromager (1977), and Maryse Condé’s Pays mêlé (1985). Within the context of the declining agricultural industry of the seventies and the eighties, these authors represent a new generation of writers from Guadeloupe and Martinique who add their own ambivalent landscape’s visions to those of Aimé Césaire’s Negritude and Édouard Glissant’s Creolization. As flora’s metaphors, trees and rhizomes reveal important aspects of the colonial world. Although the tree is a metaphor to unearth aspects of identity, does it have its own limitations in this colonial world? The theoretical basis for questioning the tree is rooted in Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Édouard Glissant's rhizome theories. Chapter one, “Le spectre du paysage tourmenté dans Pluie et vent sur Télumée miracle”, considers the connections of the tormented landscape with the various identities of characters. These identities use flora and characteristics of some trees and plants as rhetorical constructions to highlight different perspectives of the colonial world: race and rebellion and resilience. Chapter two, “Le fromager dans le monde putrescible” in Délice et le fromager, undertakes to understand the meaning of the tree as the narrator. The identity and the nature of the possessed ceiba tree, as the narrator, reveal a corrupted colonial world. As a witness to the main character’s family and the colonial world, this tree provides a unique perspective on the destruction of the family structure and on the corruption of the colonial world. Chapter three, “La thématique du retour à travers l’espace généalogique de Pays mêlé” examines how Maryse Condé’s Pays mêlé challenges the concept of a typical family tree. The family structure through adultery and illegitimacy shows that the fragmented Surena’s genealogy appears to be constructed like a rhizome with multiple wandering links. In this chapter, we will study the questions of origin often revisited within this genealogy and we will analyze the different factors that destabilize and marginalize characters throughout several generations. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Romance Languages and Literatures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_101620 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Gustave, Thierry T. |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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