Marginalized Voices The Oral Storyteller in Two Francophone Novels

Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Van Tuyl, Jocelyn

Keywords

Bakhtin, Mikhail, Postcolonial, Francophone

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

This thesis uses the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin and Linda Hutcheon to explore the political use of polyphonous narratives in L�enfant de sable by Tahar Ben Jelloun and Solibo magnifique by Patrick Chamoiseau. Both of these postcolonial francophone novels utilize narrative structures that represent traditional storytelling circles. Members of these circles share narrative agency in lieu of giving this agency to a central narrator. The irreconcilability of this diffusion of narrative agency demonstrates how the identities of the main subjects of these novels are open to interpretation by differing ideologies; neither subject can be fixed by an authoritative definition. In the first chapter, I demonstrate how L�enfant de sable and Solibo magnifique employ techniques that refract discourses in the novel and heighten the play of dialogism. I also discuss the novels� applicability to the carnivalesque, which is at once a suspension of authoritative discourses and a means to maintain these discourses. Reading next alongside Linda Hutcheon, I consider the novels in terms of "historiographic metafiction." This term reflects Hutcheon�s assertion that postmodernism is inherently paradoxical � it is simultaneously aware of its internal construction and insistent on external historical situatedness. This paradox raises awareness of the contingent nature of discourses outside the novel. I discuss the ability of these novels to question the validity of authoritative discourses before concluding with some expanded applications of the structures of L�enfant de sable and Solibo magnifique to the postcolonial world.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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