Martinican literature

Last updated August 13, 2023

Martinican literature is primarily written in French or Creole and draws upon influences from African, French and Indigenous traditions, as well as from various other cultures represented in Martinique.^[1] The development of literature in Martinique is linked to that of other parts of the French Caribbean but has its own distinct historical context and characteristics.^[2]

The writing of Martinique is strongly linked to political and philosophical theory.^[3] Writers and theories originating from Martinique, such as Aimé Césaire, Paulette Nardal, Frantz Fanon and Édouard Glissant have been influential on wider Francophone literature and thought. This impact has also extended beyond the French-speaking world, including Anglophone literature and literary theory.

Martinican literature often explores themes of identity, postcolonialism, slavery and nationalism. It is marked by the historical and political context of Martinique as a former French colony and current overseas department and region.^[2]

History

Pre-colonial era

Before the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean in 1494, the main ethnic groups of Martinique were the Arawak and the Kalinago.^[4] Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant find traces of an indigenous storytelling tradition in petroglyphs carved into rocks.^[1] While there is no literary tradition from this period in the conventional sense, influences from Indigenous modes of storytelling remain in the literature of Martinique.

Colonial era

Early writing in French originating from Martinique was written by colonial settlers from Europe, primarily in the form of descriptions of the region.^[1] This was primarily done by missionaries and priests such as Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre, who published Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les Français from 1667 to 1671.^[3]

It was not until the late eighteenth century that writing produced by writers born in Martinique and elsewhere in the Antilles began to appear.^[3] These texts were written by those in the white béké class of descendants of European settlers. While writing by black and mixed-race authors began to emerge in Haiti and a Haitian literature began to develop in the nineteenth century after independence in 1804, the written output of Martinique, still a French colony, continued to originate primarily from béké writers.^[3]

20th Century

There were three main schools of thought in Martinican literature and theory during the twentieth century: Négritude, Antillanité and Créolité.^[5]

In the early twentieth century, non-white poets began to publish poetry. Eugène Agricole was the first black Antillean poet to publish a volume of poetry, Fleurs des Antilles in 1900.^[3] Early black Martinican literature was written in a derivative style that attempted to assimilate with writing from Metropolitan France. A black Martinican literary tradition began to develop in the 1920s and 1930s. Aimé Césaire and Négritude were instrumental in the development of this tradition.

Négritude was founded in the 1930s by a group of students in Paris and the movement underwent many transformations and was practiced differently by its various proponents.^[6]

In 1939, Césaire published the highly influential book-length poem, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal , which reflects on cultural identity and is regarded as one of the most important Négritude texts.^[6]

In 1946, Martinique became an overseas department of France. Césaire, who was not only a poet but also a politician, was involved in passing the law implementing departmentalization.^[7] The status of the island as part of the French republic has influenced much of its literature, which often deals with questions of cultural identity and nationalism.^[2]

Poetry was the main genre associated with Négritude and made up most of the Antillean literary production in the 1940s and 1950s, but Martinican writers began writing novels in this period as well, such as Mayotte Capécia's I Am a Martinican Woman (1948), Raphaël Tardon's Starkenfirst (1947) and Joseph Zobel's La Rue Cases-Nègres (1950).^[3]

The novel became the dominant form of literature in Martinique from 1960 onwards. In the 1960s, an interest in literature in Creole began to emerge.^[3] This was to some extent related to the support for pro-independence movements, which often advocated for Creole as a national language.^[3] However, French remains the primary language for the production of literature in Martinique, though many writers incorporate Creole into their writing.

At the forefront of the study and promotion of Antillean culture and identity was Édouard Glissant, whose body of work includes poetry, essays, theater and novels. He was critical of Césaire and Négritude and emphasized the historical and sociocultural context of the Caribbean and the hybridity of Antillean identity.^[7] His contributions to literary theory, especially the poetics of relation, have had an important influence on postcolonial literature and criticism.

In the 1970s, a greater number of women writers began to publish writing which explored themes of gender and Antillean identity.^[3]

In the 1980s, influenced by Édouard Glissant, Martinican writers became interested in tracing the Creolization, or the process of the formation of Antillean language and identity through the mixing of cultural influences.^[8] In 1989, Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant published In Praise of Creoleness (French: Éloge de la créolité), an essay which serves as the manifesto for the Créolité movement.^[9] These ideas are reflected in the works of these three authors as well as others. Chamoiseau's 1992 novel Texaco explores the process of creolization and has had an important impact on Francophone literature.

Négritude

Martinican writing in the mid-twentieth century was marked by the Négritude movement established by Francophone intellectuals during the 1930s by Martinican poet Aimé Césaire with Léon Damas, Léopold Sédar Senghor.^[5] Other important figures included Paulette Nardal and her sister Jane Nardal, also from Martinique. Négritude is both a cultural and political movement that emphasizes collective experience, history and African identity among black diaspora.^[3]^[6] There is an emphasis on the shared experience of slavery. Césaire's legacy remains an inspiration and important influence on postcolonial literature and thought and Négritude has inspired other movements.

Créolité

Edouard Glissant EdouardGlissant.jpg — Édouard Glissant

Créolité emerged in response to Négritude's singular focus on Africa and emphasizes the heterogeneity of Antillean culture and identity.^[10] The movement was founded by Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphäel Confiant in the 1980s and is inspired by Édouard Glissant's concepts of Antillanité and Creolization.^[9] The ideas and aesthetics of Créolité can be found in much contemporary Martinican writing, including an emphasis on oral tradition and creole language and identity.

Martinican women's writing

Paulette Nardal, an important contributor to the Negritude movement Paulette Nardal.jpg — Paulette Nardal, an important contributor to the Négritude movement

Much scholarship related to the literature of Martinique focuses on men's contributions and both the Négritude and Créolité movements have been criticised for being patriarchal.^[11] Women's writing emerged later in the development of Martinican literature but Martinican women have had important contributions both to Francophone women's writing and Caribbean literature and thought as a whole.^[3]

Sisters Jan and Paulette Nardal played a significant role in the creation of Négritude. Paulette Nardal translated works from the Harlem Renaissance into French, introducing the founders of Négritude to the work of African-American intellectuals, which influenced the development of the movement.^[12]

Mayotte Capécia's I Am a Martinican Woman was published in 1948, making it the first book by a woman of color to be published in France.^[13]

Notable writers

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martinique</span> Overseas department of France in the Caribbean

Martinique is an island which is a single territorial collectivity of the French Republic. It is also part of the European Union as an Outermost Region within the Special territories of members of the European Economic Area, but is not part of the Schengen Area and the European Union Customs Union. As part of the French (Antilles) West Indies, Martinique is located in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea. It has a land area of 1,128 km² (436 sq mi) and a population of 364,508 inhabitants as of January 2019. One of the Windward Islands, it is directly north of Saint Lucia, northwest of Barbados and south of Dominica. Martinique is an Outermost Region and a special territory of the European Union; the currency in use is the euro. Virtually the entire population speaks both French and Martinican Creole.

Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a Francophone Martinican poet, author, and politician. He was "one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature" and coined the word négritude in French. He founded the Parti progressiste martiniquais in 1958, and served in the French National Assembly from 1945 to 1993 and as President of the Regional Council of Martinique from 1983 to 1988.

Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement. His work spans a variety of forms and genres, including novels, essays, children's books, screenplays, theatre and comics. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992.

Négritude is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating "Black consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora. Négritude gathers writers such as sisters Paulette and Jeanne Nardal, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, Abdoulaye Sadji, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Léon Damas of French Guiana. Négritude intellectuals disavowed colonialism, racism and Eurocentrism. They promoted African culture within a framework of persistent Franco-African ties. The intellectuals employed Marxist political philosophy, in the Black radical tradition. The writers drew heavily on a surrealist literary style, and some say they were also influenced somewhat by the Surrealist stylistics, and in their work often explored the experience of diasporic being, asserting one's self and identity, and ideas of home, home-going and belonging.

Antillean Creole is a French-based creole that is primarily spoken in the Lesser Antilles. Its grammar and vocabulary include elements of French, Carib, English, and African languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Édouard Glissant</span>

Édouard Glissant was a French writer, poet, philosopher, and literary critic from Martinique. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary and Francophone literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raphaël Confiant</span> Martiniquan writer

Raphaël Confiant is a Martinican writer known for his literary commitment towards Creole literature.

Jean Bernabé was a writer and linguist.

Créolité is a literary movement first developed in the 1980s by the Martinican writers Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé and Raphaël Confiant. They published Eloge de la créolité in 1989 as a response to the perceived inadequacies of the négritude movement. Créolité, or "creoleness", is a neologism which attempts to describe the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of places like the Antilles and, more specifically, of the French Caribbean.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">René Ménil</span> Martiniquais writer (1907–2004)

René Ménil was a French surrealist writer and philosopher who lived on the island of Martinique.

Antillanité is a literary and political movement developed in the 1960s that stresses the creation of a specific West Indian identity out of a multiplicity of ethnic and cultural elements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Index of Martinique-related articles</span>

Articles related to the French overseas department of Martinique include:

Haitian literature has been closely intertwined with the political life of Haiti. Haitian intellectuals turned successively or simultaneously to African traditions, France, Latin America, the UK, and the United States. At the same time, Haitian history has always been a rich source of inspiration for literature, with its heroes, its upheavals, its cruelties and its rites.

Buata Bundu Malela is a specialist in comparative literature and historian of the intellectuals of the Afro-West-Indian diaspora. He was born in Kinshasa, Zaire in 1979 to Congolese and Senegalese parents.

Ina Césaire is a French playwright and ethnographer. In her 1981 article "Littérature orale et contes", "she discusses how Caribbean story tales are true 'révélateur' of that [Caribbean] spirit and affirms that the role of Caribbean folktale is to represent the culture."

Jeanne "Jane" Nardal was a French writer, philosopher, teacher, and political commentator from Martinique. She and her sister, Paulette Nardal, are considered to have laid the theoretical and philosophical groundwork of the Négritude movement, a cultural, political, and literary movement, which first emerged in 1930s, Paris and sought to unite Black intellectuals in the current and former French colonies. The term "Négritude" itself was coined by Martiniquan writer-activist Aimé Césaire, one of the three individuals formally recognized as the "fathers" of the cultural movement, along with Senegalese poet Léopold Senghor and French Guianese writer Léon Damas. It was not until relatively recently, however, that the women involved in the Négritude movement, including Jane and Paulette Nardal, began to receive the recognition they were due.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paulette Nardal</span>

Paulette Nardal was a French writer from Martinique, a journalist, and one of the drivers of the development of black literary consciousness. She was one of the authors involved in the creation of the Négritude genre and introduced French intellectuals to the works of members of the Harlem Renaissance through her translations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzanne Césaire</span>

Suzanne Césaire, born in Martinique, an overseas department of France, was a French writer, teacher, scholar, anti-colonial and feminist activist, and Surrealist. Her husband was the poet and politician Aimé Césaire.

Tropiques was a quarterly literary magazine published in Martinique from 1941 to 1945. It was founded by Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, and other Martinican intellectuals of the era, who contributed poetry, essays, and fiction to the magazine. While resisting the Vichy-supported government that ruled Martinique at the time, the writers commented on colonialism, surrealism, and other topics. André Breton, the French leader of surrealism, contributed to the magazine and helped turn it into a leading voice of surrealism in the Caribbean.

Slave Old Man is a 1997 novella by Patrick Chamoiseau. This novel is a part of the literary Créolité movement, created by Francophone authors Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Bernabé, and Raphaël Confiant during the 1980s. In 2018, an English translation by Linda Coverdale was published and won the 2019 Best Translated Book Award.

References

1 2 3 Patrick, Chamoiseau; Confiant, Raphäel (1991). Lettres créoles : tracées antillaises et continentales de la littérature : Haïti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, 1635-1975 (in French). Paris: Hatier. ISBN 2-218-03727-0. OCLC 25150616.
1 2 3 "Un demi-siècle de littérature engagée aux Antilles françaises (1939-1989), de Césaire à Confiant". Montray Kréyol (in French). 2007-02-18. Retrieved 2023-03-31.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 An introduction to Caribbean francophone writing : Guadeloupe and Martinique. Sam Haigh. Oxford: Berg. 1999. ISBN 1-85973-293-3. OCLC 42256691.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
↑ Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth (2008). Literature of the Caribbean. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-32845-5. OCLC 255798143.
1 2 Picanço, Luciano C. (2000). Vers un concept de littérature nationale martiniquaise évolution de la littérature martiniquaise au XXème siècle - une étude sur l'oeuvre d'Aimé Césaire, Édouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau et Raphae͏̈l Confiant (in French). Peter Lang. ISBN 0-8204-5030-8. OCLC 231863013.
1 2 3 Ness, Immanuel; Cope, Zak (2016). The Palgrave encyclopedia of imperialism and anti-imperialism. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-39277-9. OCLC 930079555.
1 2 Perina, Mickaella L. (2009). "Beyond Négritude and Créolité: The Ongoing Creolization of Identities". The CLR James Journal. 15 (1): 67–91. ISSN 2167-4256.
↑ Dauler, Clara (2018-06-25). "Les réécritures du passé en Martinique à travers le roman historique postmoderne : un défi identitaire". Études caribéennes (in French) (1). doi: 10.4000/etudescaribeennes.12120 . ISSN 1779-0980.
1 2 Bernabé, Jean; Chamoiseau, Patrick; Confiant, Raphaël; Khyar, Mohamed B. Taleb (1990). "In Praise of Creoleness". Callaloo. 13 (4): 886–909. doi:10.2307/2931390. ISSN 0161-2492.
↑ Buchanan, Ian (2010). A dictionary of critical theory (1st ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-953291-9. OCLC 464580932.
↑ Gaeta, Jill M. (2010). "Reevaluating the 'Masculine' and 'Feminine': Patrick Chamoiseau's "Kosto et ses deux enfants"". The French Review. 84 (1): 140–149. ISSN 0016-111X.
↑ Smith, Robert P. (2001). "BLACK LIKE THAT: PAULETTE NARDAL AND THE NEGRITUDE SALON". CLA Journal. 45 (1): 53–68. ISSN 0007-8549.
↑ Valens, K (2015). Desire between women in caribbean literature. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1-349-46470-8. OCLC 951520510.