Creole Identity in the French Caribbean NovelPosted in Books, Caribbean/Latin America, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Monographs on 2011-09-23 21:26Z by Steven |
Creole Identity in the French Caribbean Novel
University Press of Florida
2001-01-18
320 pages
6 x 9
ISBN 13: 978-0-8130-1835-5; ISBN 10: 0-8130-1835-8
H. Adlai Murdoch, Associate Professor of French and Francophone Literature
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Adlai Murdoch offers a detailed rereading of five major contemporary French Caribbean writers–Glissant, Condé, Maximin, Dracius-Pinalie, and Chamoiseau. Emphasizing the role of narrative in fashioning the cultural and political doubleness of Caribbean Creole identity, Murdoch shows how these authors actively rewrite their own colonially driven history.
Murdoch maintains that the culture of the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique is less homogeneous and more creatively fragmented than is commonly supposed. Promoting a new vision of this multifaceted region, he challenges preconceived notions of what it means to be both French and West Indian. The author’s own West Indian origin provides him with intimate, firsthand knowledge of the nuances of day-to-day Caribbean life.
While invaluable to students of Caribbean literature, this work will also appeal to those interested in the African diaspora, French and postcolonial studies, and literary theory.