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19th and 20th Century French Exoticism: Pierre Loti, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Michel Leiris, and Simone Schwarz-Bart

This study of four 19th and 20th century colonial texts, as well as a later
postcolonial novel exposes the cadres exotiques, or exotic frameworks, of literary
exoticism. The thesis names and interprets the moods of and reactions to exoticism,
including colonial exoticism, antiexoticism, and autoexoticism. Poetic and theoretical
interpretations of exoticism, such as Victor Segalens Notion du Divers and Edouard
Glissants Opacité and Poétique de la Relation challenge the prevalent assumptions that
the literary practice was only an unfortunate byproduct of colonialism.
The first chapter presents literary history and theoretical considerations relating
to exoticism: Orientalism, nostalgia, colonial literary history, and a critical literature
review. Chapter II explores Le Roman dun spahi (1881) and Les Trois dames de la
Kasbah (1882) by Pierre Loti, two texts dating from Frances high colonial period of the
late 19th century. Chapter III studies works and contexts of the 1930sLouis-Ferdinand
Célines Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) and Michel Leiriss LAfrique fantôme (1934).
These modernist texts appeared with the decline of colonial exoticisms popularity.
conclude with an analysis of Simone Schwarz-Barts Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle
(1973), a postcolonial novel about the life of a Creole woman in the former French
colony of Guadeloupe.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-06092004-172114
Date16 June 2004
CreatorsWhite, Robin Anita
ContributorsKate Jensen, Pius Ngandu, Helen Regis, Nathaniel Wing, Jack Yeager, Kevin Risk
PublisherLSU
Source SetsLouisiana State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-06092004-172114/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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