Dissertationen zum Thema „Indian Ocean literature (French)“

Most research into contemporary French West Indian literature focuses on writing that stresses the significance of the plantation and urban cultures of the islands in the early to mid-twentieth century or, more recently, on the desire of some writers to explore broader trans-national influences or environments. Despite the prominence of migration in post-war French West Indian history, however, less has been said about the engagement of French West Indian literature with migration to metropolitan France. Although commentators have recently begun to discuss the work of a handful of writers in connection with migration to the métropole, this thesis offers a full-length analysis of the issue, bringing writers, texts and literary and cultural theories together with the cultural and sociological context of migration to metropolitan France. I comment on a variety of well-known authors and texts, while also presenting writers and writing that have frequently been neglected in other studies. I also consider the reasons for what I believe to be both the slow development of a literature of migration, as well as the low profile of this issue within Francophone literary studies. Part One, ‘French and West Indian: Historical and Sociological Contexts’, considers the broad context of migration, reflecting on how that context impacts on the West Indians and their descendants in the métropole. Part Two, ‘Theory and the French West Indian Diaspora’, looks at colonisation, postcolonial criticism, and the current scholarship devoted to them, as these concern the issues of migration and identity in sociological and literary terms. Part Three, ‘Patterns of Discourse: Reflections of the Métropole’, takes recurrent themes that have appeared in the works of a variety of less well-known writers, including writers of West Indian origin born in the métropole. In Part Four, ‘Siting the Métropole’, I examine three successful yet very different writers and consider their contributions to the literature of migration, in the light of the reflections made and the patterns uncovered earlier in this thesis. My conclusion unites the themes of inclusion and exclusion that this subject brings to the fore, and suggests potential literary and scholarly developments for the future.

Cette thèse interroge les origines, les interférences et la production de la littérature comorienne d’expression française. Au confluent entre critique littéraire, historiographie anthropologique des sources et analyse des thématiques dans la création, elle questionne aussi la notion de réception dans un contexte éditorial minimaliste et où langue d’écriture et langue vernaculaire s’interfèrent. En près de 30 ans, les quelques 160 ouvrages publiés de 1985 à nos jours, laissent percer des débuts lents et difficiles. Une réalité qui sera contredite à la fin des années 90 où des maisons d’éditions, même éphémères, naissent avec pour mot d’ordre, promouvoir la littérature comorienne. Va alors s’amorcer une dynamique nouvelle inscrite par le nombre et la variété des genres édités, la multiplicité des thématiques abordées et par l’orientation des revendications littéraires d’ordre esthétique en écho à des revendications identitaires. Parallèlement, transparaît une forme de tâtonnement textuel qui laisse apparaître une dualité narrative sous-tendue dans l’organisation fictionnelle et narratologique des œuvres et mettant en place un type de personnage-pensée à l’origine d’une hybridité textuelle. Par conséquent, cette thèse procède à une forme de bilan de ces trente années d’écriture suivant deux axes d’analyse. Un axe chronologique qui fait coïncider des éléments liés à l’histoire du peuplement avec l’établissement d’une écriture pour les îles afin d’appréhender le contexte originel de production ; un axe analytique et herméneutique recoupant faits historiques et sociaux en rapport avec les objets ou motifs de production et révélant la source des interrogations des écrivains comoriens francophones
This thesis questions the origins, interferences and the production of French-speaking Comorian literature. At the junction of literary criticism, anthropologic historiography of the source documents and thematic analysis within the creation, it also investigates the notion of reception in a minimalist editorial context where the written and the vernacular languages interfere with each other. For the past 30 years, the 160 publications that have been published, since 1985 to date, have shown slow and difficult beginnings. A trend that would be reversed from the late 1990s, where many publishing houses have emerged, even if it was quite briefly for some of them, with a shared goal: to promote Comorian literature. A new trend will then begin as proven by the number and variety of genres being published, the diversity of the themes discussed, and the direction of the literary assertions of an aesthetic angle in response to identity assertions. At the same time, a form of textual hesitation transpired, shedding a light on a narrative duality, from a narratologic and fictional organisation of the publications, highlighting a type of character-thought creating a form of literal hybridity. Therefore, As a consequence, this thesis proceeds a kind of statement from thirty years of writing according to two axis of analysis. A chronological axis matches elements which are linked to the peopling History with the establishment of a writing for the islands in order to grasp the original context of production; an analytic and hermeneutic axis matching historical and social facts related to subjects or sources of production and revealing the sources of French-speaking Comorian writers’ questionings

This project focuses on the travel literature produced through the Indian Ocean world of the dhow trade. It examines the medieval story of "Sindbad the Sailor and Sindbad the Porter" alongside the 20th century travel narrative Sons of Sindbad (1940) written by mariner and author Alan Villiers. Both texts engage with the ocean and the ways in which immersion in the watery world result in an uneasy sense of hybridization. In "Sindbad", the sailor's world is represented as a place of deep encounter that renders him indelibly changed and so sets up a paradox between home and away. His voyages and adventures, while often explored purely in terms of their fantastic value, depict an Indian Ocean world that is densely connected through trade and travel. Alan Villiers' narrative uses "Sindbad" as a trope and signifier for this world and through him seeks to rekindle the romance of the free sea and pure-sail that is encroached upon by maritime modernity. Villiers constructs himself as a citizen of the sea and so straddles an uneasy line between the Arab sailors and his own colonial affiliations. It is a position that means he is constantly narrating from a perspective that is simultaneously inside and out. This minor dissertation will look at the way in which travel narratives located in the Indian Ocean render the subjects foreign to themselves and how the sense of identity flux engendered through the tales shed light on and open new paths for enquiry, what I have called archipelagic thinking, focusing not on constructed borders but connectivity across time and between disparate locations.

This thesis considers the influence of three West Indian writers who contributed to the development of Negritude as a literary, social and political phenomenon. The author shows that the racial awareness central to the Negritude movement was strongly affected by the experiences in Haiti and Martinique in particular. The thesis is comprised of three chapters and a conclusion. The first examines the awakening of racial consciousness in Paris in the 1930s and ‘40s, placing those developments in literary and historical perspective. This chapter also serves as an introduction to the milieu of West Indian and black American writers who were aggressively active in deriving a literary response to racial oppression. The second and third chapters analyze the roles of individual writers. The second chapter probes the writings of Jacques Roumain. He made an impression with his Marxist analysis of the Haitian situation, pushed for an “indigenous” Haitian literature, and developed the peasant novel. By using excerpts from essays, poems, and his novel, Gouverneurs de la Rosee, the writer details the influence of this Haitian author on Negritude writers. The third chapter considers two lesser—studied writers, the Martinicans Etienne Lero and Gilbert Gratiant. Gratiant embraced the mixed cultural heritage of Martinique, while Lero fought for an African outlook in initiating Legitime Defense, and through other contributions. An exploration of a small sampling of their work will help to clarify the context of color and caste in Martinique. The conclusion summarizes the authors’ social critique of French civilization and shows that the experiences of the West Indian authors discussed in the thesis influenced the principal leaders of Negritude--Leopold Sedar Senghor, Leon Damas and Aime Cesaire--and that this can be seen in the conceptions the Negritude movement embraced.

Tracked and inscribed across the centuries by traders, pilgrims and imperial competitors, the Indian Ocean is written into literature in English by Joseph Conrad, and later by selected novelists from the region. As this thesis suggests, the Indian Ocean is imagined as a space of littoral interconnections, nomadic cosmopolitanisms, ancient networks of trade and contemporary networks of cooperation and crime. This thesis considers selected fiction written in English from or about the Indian Ocean—from the particular culture around its shores, and about the interconnections among its port cities. It focuses on Conrad, alongside Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Lindsey Collen, whose work in many ways captures the geographical scope of the Indian Ocean: India, East Africa and a mid-point, Mauritius. Conrad’s work is examined as a foundational text for writing of the space, while the later writers, in turn, proleptically suggest a rereading of Conrad’s oeuvre through an oceanic lens. Alongside their diverse interests and emphases, the authors considered in this thesis write the Indian Ocean as a space in and through which to represent and interrogate historical gaps, the ethics and aesthetics of heterogeneity, and alternative geographies. The Indian Ocean allows the authors to write with empire at a distance, to subvert Eurocentric narratives and to explore the space as paradigmatic of widely connected human relations. In turn, they provide a longer imaginative history and an alternative cognitive map to imposed imperial and national boundaries. The fiction in this way brings the Indian Ocean into being, not only its borders and networks, but also its vivid, sensuous, storied world. The authors considered invoke and evoke the Indian Ocean as a representational space—producing imaginative depth that feeds into and shapes wider cultural, including historical, figurations.

Le roman de Mohamed Toihiri : roman fondateur et représentatif de la littérature comorienne. Son étude nous conduit à affirmer que c’est un roman d’analyse sociologique dans la mesure où il constitue un excellent document sur la vie quotidienne des Comoriens durant près de deux décennies (1975-1992). Mais il serait fort réducteur de le limiter à cela car ce roman ne se contente pas de présenter finement le fonctionnement de la société comorienne, il véhicule aussi une critique socio-politique radicale de celle-ci et de ses gouvernants. Ce roman inscrit son lecteur, de façon très subtile, dans son fonctionnement interne. Ce qui amène le commentateur à étudier cette inscription du lectorat ainsi que la réception de ce même roman qui démontre que si le premier roman de Mohamed Toihiri a été accueilli très froidement du fait de son engagement politique, le deuxième, beaucoup plus conciliant sur le plan politique, a bénéficié d’une réception favorable, voire même élogieuse
Mohamed Toihiri's novel : a founding and representative novel of the Comorian literature. The analysis confoirms it is a sociological novel to the extent that it is a great novel dealing with the Comorians 'daily life for two centuries (1975-1992). But it would be specific to stop there because this novel not only cleverly shows how the Comorian society works, it is also a radical criticism of this socio-political society and of its government. This novel sbtly includes the reader in its internal functioning. Thus the commentator studied this readers inclusion as well as the novel's reception : while his first novel was given a cold welcom due to its political commitment, his second novel, politically softer, received a positive welcome not to say laudatory

Cette thèse étudie du trafic des esclaves au départ de l’Afrique orientale (Mozambique) vers les Comores où des planteurs étrangers venaient les acheter comme engagés libres. Le sultanat de Saïd Ali né en 1883, a bénéficié de la protection de de la France en 1886. Malgré ce protectorat, l’esclavage n’est aboli qu’en 1904. Pour maintenir la main-d’œuvre coloniale, l’État protecteur a retardé cette abolition. Face aux hésitations, le sultanat est rattaché à Magascar en 1908, le sultan abdique en 1910, avant que la Grande Comore devienne colonie française en 1912
This Thesis studies the slaves trade starting from East Africa to Comoros where foreign growers came to buy them as free Endentured servant. The Sultanat of Saïd Ali born in 1883 benefited of French protection in 1886. Even thought this protectorate, the slavery is abolished in 1904. To maintain the colonialworkforce, The Protecting State has delayed this abolition. In front of theses hesitations, the Sultan is attached to Madagascar in 1908, the sultan abdicated in 1910, before that the Great Comoro become a French colony in 1912

Cette thèse étudie du trafic des esclaves au départ de l’Afrique orientale (Mozambique) vers les Comores où des planteurs étrangers venaient les acheter comme engagés libres. Le sultanat de Saïd Ali né en 1883, a bénéficié de la protection de de la France en 1886. Malgré ce protectorat, l’esclavage n’est aboli qu’en 1904. Pour maintenir la main-d’œuvre coloniale, l’État protecteur a retardé cette abolition. Face aux hésitations, le sultanat est rattaché à Magascar en 1908, le sultan abdique en 1910, avant que la Grande Comore devienne colonie française en 1912
This Thesis studies the slaves trade starting from East Africa to Comoros where foreign growers came to buy them as free Endentured servant. The Sultanat of Saïd Ali born in 1883 benefited of French protection in 1886. Even thought this protectorate, the slavery is abolished in 1904. To maintain the colonialworkforce, The Protecting State has delayed this abolition. In front of theses hesitations, the Sultan is attached to Madagascar in 1908, the sultan abdicated in 1910, before that the Great Comoro become a French colony in 1912

La formation professionnelle à l'Entrepreneuriat (création d'entreprise, conseil en entreprise, intrapreneuriat) procède de trois dimensions indissociables : structurale, cognitive et praxéologique. Les interactions entre ces trois dimensions en font des facteurs clés de réussite du projet entrepreneurial : le facteur structural renvoie à la problématique de la mise en place de l'entreprise, le facteur cognitif renvoie aux contenus de la formation comme ressources stratégiques ouvrant sur le monde de l'entreprise dans toutes ses dimensions et le facteur praxéologique renvoie à la démarche de projet en formation. Dans le contexte de l'Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), la formation professionnelle à l'entrepreneuriat dispensée par l'Institut de la Francophonie pour l'Entrepreneuriat (IFE), situé à l'université de Réduit, à l'île Maurice, s'inscrit dans un vaste réseau de partenaires, administré par l'Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF). L'émergence de l'entrepreneur francophone passe par son entrée en formation professionnelle auprès de formateurs francophones internationaux, par la prise de risque au retour dans son pays et par l'appui d'un réseau de partenaires financiers et commerciaux francophones. L'intérêt de la thèse réside dans la capacité à en faire émerger les aspects fondamentaux par la recherche sur la formation professionnelle à l'Entrepreneuriat, et, à partir des aspects appliqués, à développer les singularités propres au contexte de la francophonie et à l'expérience de l'IFE.

This dissertation examines the notion of nationhood and the intricacies of identity in Mauritius as depicted in the work of artists from this island. Through the writing of Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel, Natacha Appanah, Amal Sewtohul, and Carl de Souza, as well as through the works of filmmakers Harikrisna Anenden and David Constantin, I analyze the distinctive ways in which these artists explore the burden of a traumatic past along with their ensuing representations of the present images of the Mauritian people. Their works best encapsulate the paradoxical place that Mauritius holds in the Francophone and Anglophone world, i.e. that it was first a French and then a British colony, which respectively introduced slavery and indentured servants to this island that had no autochthone population. As a result, the question of identity – both individual and national – remains intrinsically linked to the memory of slavery and of indentured servitude/Coolitude, in a country which history prior to colonization has little been explored. Thus far, critical work in Francophone literature has studied these two memories separately. My analysis creates a dialogue between them. This is crucial to the understanding of just how the intersection of slavery and Coolitude, have shaped today’s Mauritian national identity. Each chapter raises a key question on the subject: How does the writing of Devi, along with Anenden’s cinema, both of which are centered on marginalized communities, present a critical framework through which the socio-economic issues of the island can be studied? In what ways does Appanah’s fiction convoke historical events, while problematizing deeply engrained power dynamics? What does it mean for Patel and Constantin to give voice to the subaltern and to speak for/instead of a minority group? Finally, how do the works of these different writers, namely Patel, Appanah, Sewtohul and de Souza, address the complexities and tensions within the multicultural society of Mauritius? My conclusion reflects on the critical role and impact of artistic expression in the creation of a mosaic in which we can better understand the Mauritian nation when this country is at the milestone of 50 years of independence.
2020-11-27T00:00:00Z

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alberta, 2009.
Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on Oct. 20, 2009). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in French Language, Literatures and Linguistics, Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies. University of Alberta, Fall 2009." Includes bibliographical references.

Abstract Versione italiana Nell'ambito della produzione letteraria del romanziere indiano Amitav Ghosh, gli ultimi due romanzi (Mare di papaveri e Il fiume dell'oppio) rappresentano un esempio di summa literaria che unisce le due anime di scrittore e di storiografo di questo autore. I due romanzi, facenti parte dell'annunciata Trilogia dell'Ibis, raccolgono e portano a compimento la poetica di questo autore che vede la scrittura della fiction come complemento necessario alla storiografia, in una visione interdisciplinare della conoscenza del passato e della scrittura della storia. Del resto il Ghosh romanziere si è contraddistinto sin dai suoi esordi come uno scrittore particolarmente attento alla ricerca e all'analisi delle fonti storiche che sono alla base dei suoi romanzi. L'interesse per la storia, inoltre, costituisce uno dei topic principali della narrativa indiana contemporanea, e si lega da una parte alla critica del pensiero storico eurocentrico in rapporto alla particolare realtà indiana, dall'altra alla tematica della lingua come metastoria, simbolo e veicolo di una particolare visione del mondo che naturalmente influenza anche il racconto del passato. La discussione accademica del rapporto tra scrittura della storia e scrittura letteraria ha subito una svolta fondamentale a partire dai lavori di Hayden White e di alcuni filosofi come Jacques Derrida e Paul Ricoeur, che hanno sottolineato da una parte la natura provvisoria e soggettiva della pratica storiografica, dall'altra la centralità dell'elemento narrativo in questo tipo di scrittura, distanziando quindi la storia come disciplina dall'oggettività tipica della scienza, e paragonandola invece a una pratica di mappatura dei rapporti e degli incroci tra il reale e l’immaginario. A partire da questi presupposti, viene indagata dapprima la definizione, nella produzione letteraria di Ghosh, di un tipo di scrittura ibrida, a metà tra storiografia e fiction, qui denominata fictional history. Le caratteristiche fondamentali di questa poetica vengono identificate in alcune strategie di scrittura e indagine, nella fattispecie: la critica della centralità del concetto di stato-nazione, come metafora pervasiva utilizzata dalla scienza occidentale, la cui decostruzione diventa per Ghosh occasione per proporre concetti alternativi di appartenenza culturale, nonché per formulare una nuova definizione di umanismo alla luce dell'esperienza della postmodernità; l'introduzione dell'individuo e dell'esperienza individuale, in particolare di quella delle classi subalterne, come centro focale della storia; l'utilizzo della facoltà della imagination with precision come strumento principe per una scrittura immaginativa della storia. Successivamente vengono presi in esame i due romanzi attualmente pubblicati della Trilogia dell'Ibis. Dall'analisi di Mare di papaveri emerge la necessità di focalizzare l'attenzione sull'individualità dei personaggi, tratteggiati nel romanzo sia come esempi di irriducibile differenza culturale, sia come figure simboliche di una umanità plurale che sfida i confini canonici tra le culture e introduce la necessità di pensare l'esperienza umana come movimento e negoziazione. In River of Smoke, invece, si prende in esame principalmente la critica della forma del romanzo storico moderno, sulla cui tradizione si innesta la scrittura di Ghosh, rinnovandola e decostruendone ´dall'interno` le categorie essenziali, per arrivare a proporre un nuovo tipo di romanzo storico della postmodernità. Per entrambi i romanzi, inoltre, viene sottolineata l'importanza della sperimentazione e della ricerca linguistica nella scrittura di questo autore, che ancora una volta attua una decostruzione interna della forma della lingua inglese alla luce dell'esperienza della colonizzazione e della globalizzazione. Una piccola appendice, infine, è dedicata al commento del blog di Amitav Ghosh, visto come una sorta di archivio digitale che ´apre` la forma normalmente chiusa del romanzo e ancora una volta propone una visione della scrittura letteraria come una pratica ´oltre i confini` delle forme, dei generi e delle discipline.
Abstract English Version Among the literary production of the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh, the latest novels (Sea of Poppies and River of Smoke) constitute a sort of summa literaria that brings together this author's two souls: that of the writer and that of the historiographer. The novels, part of the announced Ibis Trilogy, collect and develop this author's thought, which sees fiction-writing as a necessary complement to historiography, within an interdisciplinary vision of the knowledge of the past and of history-writing. Ghosh, as a novelist, has proved to be particularly concerned about the practice of research and about the analysis of the historical sources. Moreover, the concern about history is one of the principal topics of the contemporary Indian fiction. On the one hand, it is related to the critique of the eurocentric historical thought, especially with regard to the Indian experience; on the other hand, it is bound to the topic of language as metahistory, since language is seen as a symbol of a particular Weltanschaaung which obviously influences the writing of the past. The academic debate on the relationships between historiography and fiction writing has been subjected to an unprecedented revolution ever since Hayden White's works and the theories of a series of philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur. On the one hand, these works have highlighted the provisional and subjective character of the historiographical practice; on the other hand, they have brought to the forefront the centrality of the narrative element in this kind of writing. By doing so, they have distanced history as a discipline from the typical objectivity of science, defining it as a practice whose task is to map the relationships between the real and the imaginary. Given these premises, the analysis focuses first on Ghosh's literary production in general, tracing the emergence of a kind of hybrid writing, in-between historiography and fiction, which goes under the name of ´fictional history`. The essential characteristics of this aesthetics are a series of ´strategies`; the first one is the critique of the concept of the nation-state, a pervasive metaphor used by the Western science, whose deconstruction serves Ghosh as a means to propose alternative definitions of cultural belonging, and to formulate a new kind of humanism of the postmodern era. Second, Ghosh chooses the individual and the individual experience, the subalterns' one in particular, as the core of history; third, he introduces the use of imagination with precision as the essential tool for an imaginative writing of history. The second part of the analysis regards the two already published novels of the Ibis Trilogy. The analysis of Sea of Poppies focuses on the individuality of the characters, described in the novel both as examples of an inescapable cultural difference, and as symbols of a plural humanity which challenges the canonical borders between cultures, introducing a view of the human experience as a process of movement and negotiation. In River of Smoke, the analysis focuses essentially on the critique of the form of the modern historical novel; Ghosh starts from this tradition and reinvents it, deconstructing its essential categories, in order to propose a new type of historical novel of postmodernity. In both novels, moreover, the importance of the linguistic research is highlighted as a central feature of this author's production; once again, Ghosh deconstructs the form of the English language from within, in the light of the experiences of colonization and globalization. Finally, a short outlook analyses Amitav Ghosh's blog, which is interpreted as a sort of digital archive that ´opens up` the normally ´closed` form of the novel and, once again, proposes a vision of fiction-writing as a practice ´beyond the borders` of forms, genres and disciplines.

France was late to enter the European race for empire in Asia, but it was the earliest nation to employ colonial research gardens to organize the push eastward. The French botanical vanguard settled on the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean where, beginning in the 1730s, a series of gardens contributed to France’s imperial fortunes and provided a model for later plant research networks in other European empires. In spite of past interpretations of French colonial science, there emergences a compelling argument that a dynamic interest in practical applications of scientific knowledge was present in the Indian Ocean region during this period. Botanical gardens on Ile de France and lie de Bourbon performed roles central to the direction of overall French colonial activities. Applied botanical gardens helped develop colonial economies. They exchanged plants with other French colonies, notably in the West Indies. They also provided information and plants, for various purposes, to the metropole. The botanical gardeners of the Mascarenes also represented France to other nations, functioning on its behalf as botanical diplomats sharing knowledge and specimens with foreign countries. This period of economic botanizing ended, for France, in 1810 with the loss of its Mascarenes colonies to the British.

Dans cette thèse, qui interroge la mise en écriture de l’enfance dans le roman contemporain de Maurice et de la Réunion, il s’agit d’analyser les dimensions suivantes : les modalités narratives, la construction, l’évolution et les fonctions du personnage enfant dans l’économie des textes, les rapports qu’il entretient avec les membres de sa famille et de son entourage immédiat, ainsi que la relation entre ces œuvres et leur contexte social et discursif. Notre corpus inclut quatorze récits d’enfance fictionnels de dix écrivains et écrivaines des Mascareignes, publiés de 1987 à 2012 : du côté mauricien, Nathacha Appanah, Ananda Devi, Marie-Thérèse Humbert, Shenaz Patel, Amal Sewtohul et Carl de Souza; du côté réunionnais, Danielle Dambreville, François Dijoux, Axel Gauvin et Jean-François Samlong. Dans ces romans, si la diversité et l’hybridité narratives, discursives et symboliques témoignent de l’imaginaire pluriel de ces sociétés hétérogènes, l’on retrouve néanmoins certaines grandes tendances, comme une écriture axée sur la mémoire du narrateur adulte ou sur l’expérience immédiate de l’enfant; des personnages enfants principalement souffrants, mal-aimés, subalternes et révoltés; ainsi que des familles et des sociétés dont le fonctionnement, les discours et les idéologies paraissent inappropriés, voire tout à fait néfastes. Si certains de ces choix esthétiques reconduisent certaines conventions, d’autres incarnent une perspective tout à fait nouvelle, voire transgressive. Par exemple, les emprunts à d’autres formes génériques comme le conte ou le théâtre, certaines écritures tout à fait singulières, ainsi que le fréquent mélange des voix et des langages se distinguent clairement des normes établies. La maltraitance extrême des petites et jeunes filles et l’apparition de la figure de l’enfant violent semblent également inédites. Le point de vue et l’expérience de l’enfant jettent enfin un regard global, approfondi et foncièrement critique sur les sociétés mauricienne et réunionnaise du présent (surtout dans le cas mauricien) comme du passé (années 1930 à 1970), procédant ainsi à un contre-discours s’opposant aux images exotiques et bucoliques de l’île paradisiaque. Du statut de témoin à celui d’acteur, l’enfant permet à l’auteur d’aborder une série de motifs et de problématiques distinctifs de l’imaginaire et des littératures de l’océan Indien, tels que l’altérité, l’identité, l’histoire, la mémoire, etc.
In this doctoral dissertation, which deals with childhood narratives in contemporary novels of Mauritius and Reunion Islands, we will examine the following dimensions: the narrative modalities, the construction, evolution and functions of the child protagonist within the texts, his relationship with different members of his family and the people around him, and the connection between these works and their social and discursive context. Our corpus includes fourteen works of fiction from ten different Mascareignes writers, published from 1987 to 2012 : from Mauritius, Nathacha Appanah, Ananda Devi, Marie-Thérèse Humbert, Shenaz Patel, Amal Sewtohul et Carl de Souza; and from Reunion, Danielle Dambreville, François Dijoux, Axel Gauvin et Jean-François Samlong. In these novels, if the narrative, discursive and symbolic diversity corresponds to the plural imaginative world of these heterogeneous societies, we can still find some significant trends, including narratives based on the adult’s memory or the child’s immediate experience; suffering, ill-treated, subaltern and rebellious child protagonists; families and societies whose general functioning, discourses and ideologies seem inappropriate, even harmful. If some of these aesthetic choices partake of certain conventions, others embody a new and even transgressive approach. For example, borrowings from other generic forms like tales, theatre, etc., particular styles of writing and the frequent mixing of different voices and languages distinguish those texts from established norms. The extreme abuse of little girls and the appearance of violent children also seem original. The child’s experience and perspective provides a global, profound and inherently critical view of present-day and past societies of Mauritius and Reunion Islands, therefore providing a counter-discourse to the exotic and bucolic images of a paradise island. From being a witness to an actor, the child allows the author to explore a series of motives and issues distinct to the imaginative world and literatures of the Indian Ocean, like otherness, identity, history, memory, etc.