Doctoral Degrees (Languages, Linguistics and Academic Literacy)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10413/6503

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Comparative analysis of autofictional features in the works of Amelie Nothomb, Calixthe Beyala and Nina Bouraoui.
(2011) Ferreira-Meyers, Karen Aline Francoise.; De Meyer, Bernard Albert Marcel Sylvain.
30 years after the coining of autofiction (Doubrovsky, 1977), there is still no general consensus about its exact meaning. This research set out to discover autofiction, whether there is a need for this term, why the public has taken such an interest in autofiction. Research questions were divided into two major categories: 1. What is autofiction? What is its origin? How has it evolved? Which differences are there, if any, between autobiography and autofiction? Is there a need for the separate genre of autofiction? Why/why not? What are its general characteristics? 2. Do the three analysed women authors – Nothomb, Beyala and Bouraoui – incorporate these elements in their writing? If so, how and why? Is autofictional writing a stage/posture in the personal writing development of an author? Is there any link between the writing of the own persona and the obsession with the public persona? Concentrating on terminological and theoretical issues, extensive literature review was done in the first part of the research. Starting from main literary criticism regarding fiction and autobiography/autofiction, the theoretical side of my research dealt with narrative identity and the true/false dichotomy of fact/fiction. Together with qualitative research about intertextuality as applied by autofictional writers (difference plagiarism and intertextual borrowing) led to a functional definition of autofiction, the basis for the comparative study of the three authors. For the research into their public persona, extensive internet research and analysis of newspaper articles were undertaken to show: 1. how the authors portray themselves; 2. how they are perceived by the media; 3. how this possibly influences their writing style. Autofiction requires analysis of: 1. why authors write 2. about what they write 3. how they incorporate the Self and the world in their writing. Bouraoui compares writing to an almost sexual act of love, the most intimate possible. Writing was the only way she could deal with childhood memories and repressed homosexuality. Beyala writes to communicate with others, while Nothomb considers writing as a means to live more intensely, after anorexia. The specificities and distinctive characteristics of the texts and authors were discovered through narrative analysis (factual research into the authors’ public persona + textual analysis of literary oeuvres). In Chapter 3 (Calixthe Beyala), feminine literary criticism as well as postcolonial theories guided my reading. Chapter 4 (Nina Bouraoui) allowed reflexion on the links between memory, identity, truth and autofictional writing. All chapters included research on Doubrovsky’s link between psychoanalysis and autofiction. In conclusion, there is a strong indication that one should speak of autofictions in the plural. This research explains some of the differences between autobiography and autofiction while underlining the importance of the existence of this new, separate sub-genre. The researcher had an opportunity to reflect on human memory and re-interpretation of facts. Where does the dividing line between truth and falsehood fall when the author puts the reader deliberately on a false track by introducing his/her work as « a novel »? Recent, post-modern writing has deliberately transgressed the fine dividing line between fact/fiction. The present research corroborates this view.
La représentation de l’hégémonie, le pouvoir et la migration dans les romans sélectionnés d’Abdourahman A. Waberi, Nadifa Mohamed et Ken Bugul.
(2017) Chilembwe, Maxwell Kelvin Dziko.; De Meyer, Bernard Albert Marcel Sylvain.
Abstract available in PDF file.
Le marronnage paradigmatique dans la littérature africaine francophone contemporaine : d' Ahmadou Kourouma à Kossi Efoui.
(2016) Awezaye, Mwilarhe Philip Ciza.; De Meyer, Bernard Albert Marcel Sylvain.
This research considers two authors Ahamdou Kourouma and Kossi Efoui in a context of paradigm shift to query the contemporary Francophone African literature discourse. The assumption about contemporary African Francophone literature is that a literary discourse should not be parochial to a culture, to a nation or to a continent. Such discourse in being confronted to different geographical space and time, challenges the idealisation of historical literary paradigms especially when they are used for the mere sake of past and present victimisation and identity claims. In challenging confined ideologies and paradigms in space and time, a writer aims at universal readership and recognition. The literary texts in Africa, seen through the length of colonialism and slavery, prone the writer to a rough and brutal spectrum of imaginary. Hence parochial and militant paradigms such as Negritude and Bantu ethnology dominated literary production before and after the independence of African countries. These paradigms idealised the black race and were obsessed with retrieving the history of the continent before colonialism; with the intention of exorcising the inferiority complex inflicted not only by colonialism but also by slavery. For this research, such paradigms are considered as "masters" with cannon status for the sake of our corpus (Kossi Efoui’s novels) conceptual analysis. In order to analyse Kossi Efoui’s novels, the choice of the concept marronnage is important as it sets the operational space for a writer who wants to free himself or herself from literary parochial and canonical paradigms’ influences. Hence, the aim of the research is to show that in moving away from aspects of social constructs, philosophical particularities and political fiascos with regard to the evolution of African literature, Kossi Efoui has managed to break the myth of ontological and social isolation of the African continent. The analysis of cultural and identity aspects in Les Soleils des indépendances, a novel by Ahmadou Kourouma, has consolidated such a claim. The Kourouma’s cited novel is considered, in this research, as a text that set the path for a paradigm shift in the Francophone literary field in Africa. In addition Les Soleils des indépendances has aided to establish a trend from certain African social, political and cultural practices. This trend is seen as the premise to Kossi Efoui’s literary endeavours to shift the African literature paradigm and contest the “status quo”. However, the research has supported at the same time that, despite claiming to be a universal writer, Kossi Efoui remains entangled in a struggle. The struggle is first to be recognised of a writer (artist) without any cultural and national labels. In actual fact, Kossi Efoui’s novels are still generally confronted to issues of identity. Nevertheless he uses various elaborated literary styles and strategies destined to deconstruct the parochial traditional African world view and to challenge the nexus from the African historical stagnation. This research refers to Bourdieu, N’Goran and Fonkoua on the concept of literary field with the aim of showing how Kossi Efoui falls in the general classification of African writers living abroad, who are trying to break the boundaries and proclaim universalism. They live in cross worlds and cross-cultural hybridity. Three major parts will shape this research: the first part is based on the theoretical framework in which different literary theories together with a targeted literary analysis of a novel considered as a founding text, The Sun of independence by Ahmadou Kourouma, are setting the path to confront Kossi Efoui’s novels. This confrontation will involve features, generally related to traditional and social life in Africa but also to philosophical considerations which will show whether his approach is theoretically different in using the “marronnage” rhetoric. The second part is an analysis of the first two novels of Kossi Efoui: La Polka and La fabrique des cérémonies. The analysis shows paradoxes between universalism and parochial approach to African literature in Kossi Efoui’s discourse as he uses literary devices such as motions intrigues, media, dance, border crossings, chaotic décor and masks. The third part builds the same trajectory of ambiguities in the literary discourse. Nonetheless the analysis emphasizes the ontological and historical impacts of events such as genocide, colonisation and slavery on the African continent. The conclusion shows that Kossi Efoui does not totally represent the claim made in the premises of this research in terms of total paradigm shift. There is a profound sense that he is still in search of a universal recognition. One would think that the obvious paradigm in Efoui’s novels is that literature should be looked at, first and foremost, as art beyond cultural, political, philosophical and social perceptions. However, it is evident that human conditions, ontological, geographic and economical contradictions, build a setback to such a claim. African literature, even when produced in the diaspora, is still subjected to the persistent classification, hierarchies, chaos and violence in the imaginary as well as the influence of cultural and political realities from the country of origin of respective writers.

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Languages, Linguistics and Academic Literacy) by Author "De Meyer, Bernard Albert Marcel Sylvain."