This dissertation casts an aesthetic light on a selection of polyphonic novels from the Francophone contemporary canon. From the forms of feminism around the prophet of islam in Far from Madina by Assia Djebar, to the multiple voices of Créolité in Solibo Magnificent by Patrick Chamoiseau, to the forms of individualism in a Guadeloupean village in Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Condé, these novels are involved in innovative literary strategies. Nonetheless, postcolonial studies left in the shadow the work of forms that is yet the operatory mode of literary thought. To bridge this gap, we need a narratological and stylistic analysis of the techniques of representation of speech and thought. By disentangling the forms and the stakes of the fascinating relationship that is at work between the other’s speech and narrative voices, my dissertation brings a welcomed contribution to Francophone studies as well as to narrative studies Three major thoughts foster this research: first the concept of counterpoint of Edward Said, seen in its dialogical dimension, the social approach to language in Voloshinov/Bakhtin, that presides to developments on dialogism, and the political approach to literature of Jacques Rancière, that casts a new light on now traditional benefits of “estrangement”. It is thus, without leaving the tenuous zone where esthetic forms meet social forms that my dissertation spans the most actual debates in Francophone studies.

Last modified

• 01/28/2019

Creator

• Emilie Marie-Louise Cappella

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2XM50

Subject

• French and Italian

Keyword

• francophone
• postcolonial
• narrative
• feminism
• politics
• islam

Date created

• 2017-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright