Mapping a Tradition
Francophone Women’s Writing from Guadeloupe
Sam Haigh
Click cover to enlarge Buy paperback at: | MHRA Texts and Dissertations 48 Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association 1 January 2000 • 244pp ISBN: 978-1-902653-20-4 (paperback) • RRP £25, $40 In recent years, critical interest in francophone literature has become increasingly pronounced. In the case of the French Caribbean, the work of several writers (Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, for example) has gained international recognition, and has formed a vital part of more general debates on history, culture, language and identity in the post colonial world. The majority of such writers, however, have been male and, perhaps recalling the preference that France has always shown for the island, have come in large part from Martinique. Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women’s Writing from Guadeloupe aims to explore a different side of francophone Caribbean writing through the examination of selected novels by Jacqueline Manicom, Michèle Lacrosil, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Dany Bébel-Gisler. Placing the work of these writers in the context of that of their better-known, male counterparts, this study argues that it has provided an important mode of intervention in, and disruption of, a literary tradition which has failed to address questions of sexual difference and has often excluded issues relating to French Caribbean women. At the same time, this study suggests that Guadeloupean women’s writing of the last thirty years may he seen to constitute a ‘tradition’ in itself, replete with its own influences and inheritances. At once within, and outside the ‘dominant’ tradition, women's writing from Guadeloupe - and Martinique - has come to occupy a position at the forefront of contemporary efforts to expand and redefine a still-burgeoning corpus of literary and theoretical work. Reviews:
Bibliography entry: Haigh, Sam, Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women’s Writing from Guadeloupe, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 48 (MHRA, 2000) First footnote reference: 35 Sam Haigh, Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women’s Writing from Guadeloupe, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 48 (MHRA, 2000), p. 21. Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Haigh, p. 47. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) Bibliography entry: Haigh, Sam. 2000. Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women’s Writing from Guadeloupe, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 48 (MHRA) Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Haigh 2000: 21). Example footnote reference: 35 Haigh 2000: 21. (To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.) This title was first published by Maney Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association. This title is now out of print. Permanent link to this title: www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Mapping-Tradition www.mhra.org.uk/publications/td-48 |
