NEW CONSCIOUSNESS AND NEW GENRE: A FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN NOVEL OF TRANSITIONAL TIME
Journal Title: Studia Litterarum - Year 2017, Vol 2, Issue 1
Abstract
In the 1990s and in the beginning of the 20 th century, Congolese and Ivorian literatures witnessed the birth of a new character, an African with bifurcated mentality that, on the one hand, keeps, at least on the superficial level, affinities with archaic consciousness while, on the other hand, is characterized by emerging individualistic and egotistic ambitions. In the mainstream genre of the novel-story, action is replaced by reflection and inner monologue that are typical of self-reflective literature. A character of the novel Le chercheur d’Afriques by a Congolese Lopes is a teacher of Nantes seeking the Africa in his childhood memories about his white father, a doctor. Various cultural values and notions merge in his consciousness. He is asocial, obsessed with one maniacal idea, and passive aggressive; when he presents himself to his father, the latter dies. Champs de bataille et d’amour by an Ivorian Tadjo represents the inner world of a married couple — a university professor and his white wife. Socially passive, obsessed with themselves, they are alienated from both the social life and each other. Widening of the mental horizon with the help of scientific knowledge and contacts with the Western culture accompanied by the simultaneous collapse of the archaic collective consciousness results at best in abstract dreaming as in the case of the astronomer in Dongala’s novel Les petits gar ç ons naissent aussi des é toile. At worst — with sociopathic behavior and madness as in the novel L’impasse by a Congolese Biyaoula where the character-sociopath ends up in a psychiatric clinic. Existential dead-end is the theme of the postmodernist novel Le monsieur Ki. Rapsodie parisi è nne à sourire pour caresser le temps by an Ivorian Kwahul é . A Congolese Sony Labou Tansi was the only writer whose satirical trilogy about Beregue (fictional name) written in the style of avant-garde realism (with the use of postmodernist devices) managed to represent the types of bifurcated consciousness of the African in their diversity and create a solid picture of the contemporary Africa.
Authors and Affiliations
N. D. Lyakhovskaya
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26134
- DOI 10.22455/2500-4247-2017-2-1-132-149
- Views 401
- Downloads 17
The Dutch Connection: Johanna van der Meulen’s Contribution to Russian Symbolism
The Symbolist Ėllis’ (Lev Kobylinskij) writings during his Moscow period emphasize the split, the division and dichotomy between material reality and celestial vision. His works written in exile in Locarno-Monti in Switz...
М. Gorky as a Theoretician of Literature
The essay focuses on the theoretical problem of M. Gorky’s artistic method claiming that Gorky’s work combines elements of realism, Romanticism, and modernism. Already at the beginning of his career, he realized that c...
BREAD FOR THE SOUL: ANDREY PLATONOV
The aspiration to create a better, fairer world is a central theme in Platonov’s work. In 1927 Maksim Gorky had praised Platonov’s first collection of stories. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Platonov had asked Gorky...
Universal russianness, or Gorky’s the Lower depths interpreted by Zamyatin interpreted by Renoir
This paper discusses a 1936 French film The Lower Depths based on the famous Maxim Gorky’s play and directed by Jean Renoir. The script was initially written by Evgeny Zamyatin and Jacques Companeez and then rewritten...
FROM THE CULT OF THE “SELF” TO THE ANCESTOR CULT: TRILOGY THE CULT OF THE SELF BY MAURICE BARRÈS
The debut of Maurice Barrès, his trilogy The Cult of the Self immediately won the reader’s attention. In the 1890s, his works evoked increasing interest. His contemporaries read them as a fascinating narrative about the...