Negritude and Literary Criticism: The History and Theory of "Negro-African" Literature in French

197 Pages·1996·0.62 MB·English

by  Belinda E. Jack

NEGRITUDE
AND LITERARY CRITICISM
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NEGRITUDE
AND LITERARY CRITICISM
The History and Theory
of “Negro-African” Literature in French
Belinda Elizabeth Jack
Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies #178
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jack, Belinda Elizabeth.
Negritude and literary criticism : the history and theory of
“Negro-African” literature in French / Belinda Elizabeth Jack.
p. cm. — (Contributions in Afro-American and African
studies. ISSN 0069–9624 ; no. 178)
Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN 0–313–29511–5
1. African literature (French)—20th century—History and
criticism. 2. African literature—Africa, Sub-Saharan—History and
criticism. 3. Negritude (Literary movement). 4. Blacks in
literature. I. Title. II. Serles.
PQ3980.J33 1996
840.9´896—dc20 95–35714
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.
Copyright © 1996 by Belinda Elizabeth Jack
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:
ISBN: 0-313-29511-5
ISSN: 0069–9624
First published in 1996
Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881
An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
The paper used in this book complies with
the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the
National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
For
my mother and my father
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My primitive interest in Francophone African and Caribbean writing was
first encouraged by Clive Wake; I remain immensely grateful to him. The
doctoral thesis on which this book is based was supervised by Toby
Garfitt. His careful attention to detail and scholarly rigour are examples to
which I continue to aspire. I would also like to acknowledge his enormous
kindness. The British Academy, and St John’s College, Christ Church,
and the faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford, all provided
generous support. My editor at Greenwood, Nina Pearlstein, has been ex-
emplary. I would like to thank colleagues, friends, and family, who have
helped me in all kinds of ways; and especially to thank Allan, for always
believing that what I was doing mattered.
vii
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Discourses Surrounding French Texts “about” Africa
and Africans: The Ubiquity of “Les Sciences Coloniales” 13
2 Critics of the African Diaspora
and Their Contribution to Debates in Paris 31
3 Negritude and Literary Criticism 57
4 Nationalisms and Literary Criticism:
The Nature of Literary “Engagement” 81
5 Seminal Studies: Historiography and Criticism 109
6 The Wider Debate 131
Conclusion 165
Bibliography 169
Index 185
ix
NEGRITUDE
AND LITERARY CRITICISM
Introduction
The aim of this study is threefold. First, to follow the development of
secondary discourses concerned with the body of literary works known (in
one instance) as “Negro-African literature in French.” Secondary dis-
courses include works of theory and criticism, literary histories, essays and
articles, and, to a lesser extent, prefaces and introductions to anthologies.
In tracing the emergence of a now substantial body of secondary works,
emphasis is placed on the dominant phases discernible, and on the range of
approaches exemplified.
Second, the book explores the relationship between the area defined
by secondary discourses and the criteria of evaluation proposed by them.
Frequently this relationship is an “incestuous” one (one that should be
proscribed on grounds of too close relation) which gives rise to what is
described as a major “critical tautology.” For example, where the “area”
is defined as “Negro-African literature in French,” literary works falling
within it are then explored, and in some cases evaluated (either implicitly
or explicitly), in terms of the degree of “Negro-Africanness” which they
display; “neo-Africanness” is required of significant “neo-African litera-
ture,” and so on. Whereas most “autonomous” literatures are marked by
national, geographic, linguistic, and racial homogeneity, the literature ex-
plored by the secondary texts under scrutiny emanates from a less stable
context and is governed by more problematic characteristics. It is this
instability of the literature as an obviously autonomous body of texts
which invites the “critical tautology” mentioned above. For it is a literature
constantly in search of its own coherence, of its own identity. It is a litera-
1
2 • NegritudeandLiteraryC riticism .
ture permanently under threat of “annexation” by other literatures, French
literature in particular. Checking the shifting boundaries of this literature,
and considering the ways in which the criteria of evaluation proposed by
secondary discourses are affected by those changing boundaries, provides
a focus for the account constructed here. It is for this reason that the empha-
sis is on works of a general and theoretical kind rather than on studies of
individual authors. For it is the former that, in establishing the criteria of
the literature’s autonomy, coherence, specificity, and so on, provide the
framework within which studies of individual authors take place.
Third, and intimately associated with the dialectic between definition
and evaluation, the role of Negritude is monitored in the multifarious
guises in which it appears in secondary texts. Few studies of Negro-African
literature avoid the term “Negritude,” but each time it is exploited in critical
discourse it acquires a further layer of critical significance which subse-
quent studies have to take into account.
The seminal study of Negro-African literature in French, Lilyan
Kesteloot’s Les Ecrivains noirs de langue française: naissance d’une lit-
térature, published in 1963 and translated as, significantly, Black Writers
in French: A Literary History of Negritude, argued that a new literature had
come into being:
With the awakening of the African continent, demanding its freedom, it is
time to recognize that black writers of the French language form a com-
prehensive literary movement. As early as 1948, “Black Orpheus,” Jean-
Paul Sartre’s brilliant preface to L. S. Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle
poésie nègre et malgache de langue française [“Anthology of the New
Negro and Malagasy Poetry in French”] saluted the accession of the poets
of “Negritude.” Today, everything about this poetry, its abundance and
quality, its diversity of style and form, its incontestable originality,
prompts us to consider these neo-African authors as creators of an authen-
tic literary school. [p. 7]
The particular field of study outlined by Lilyan Kesteloot, “Negro-African
literature of French expression,” continues to be proposed as a coherent
area, made up of a homogeneous corpus of texts. Since Kesteloot’s study,
however, numerous other secondary discourses have defined or described
different “areas,” which, they have argued, offer equally coherent fields of
study: “neo-African literature,” “Negro literature,” “African literature,”
and so on. As in a complex Venn diagram, some texts belong within the
area delineated by numerous intersecting circles, while others fall only
within one. Léopold Sédar Senghor’s poetry, for example, falls within the
area of “Senegalese literature,” “African literature,” “African literature in
French,” “Neo-African literature,” and, more problematically, the “litera-
ture of Negritude,” itself proposed as a distinct and coherent “literature.”1