Il Tolomeo Rivista di studi postcoloniali | A Postcolonial Studies Journal | Journal d’études postcoloniales | Revista de estudos pós-coloniais

Rivista | Il Tolomeo
Fascicolo | 25 | 2023
Articolo | « Rayonnantes étoiles d’Haïti »

« Rayonnantes étoiles d’Haïti »

Abstract

A novelist and intellectual that shaped with his writings the twentieth-century Francophone literary panorama, Jacques Stephen Alexis is a writer who needs no introduction. In his theorization of the novel, Alexis has had the great merit, among other things, of recognizing the role played by the first Haitian novelists in the evolution of the country’s literary production. Although he – like most critics, by the way – passes a very negative judgment on certain authors, Alexis nevertheless manages to overcome the tenacious prejudice of their alleged lack of Haitianity and pays tribute to their works, whose literary value has long been overlooked. One example among many: when one speaks of the origins of Haitian literature, one must, for obvious historical reasons, cite Stella (1859), the first novel written by a Haitian writer; however, the specialists who have been able to go beyond this mere historical dimension have been few. Alexis, on the other hand, has gone so far as to claim that it is “the bold beginning of marvellous realism”. Without going so far as to consider Stella as the first example of réalisme merveilleux, this article will draw on Alexis’s critical reflection and focus on the possibility of identifying common elements between his prose and Bergeaud’s. In particular, it will propose a cross-reading of Stella and L’Espace d’un cillement based on the figure of the two heroines, Stella and La Niña Estrellita respectively, and establish a kind of semantic continuity based on the image of freedom, an image they are the embodiment of.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Presentato: 04 Maggio 2023 | Accettato: 25 Settembre 2023 | Pubblicato 18 Dicembre 2023 | Lingua: fr

Keywords Stella • Haitian literature • L’Espace d’un cillement • Emeric Bergeaud • Jacques Stephen Alexis

Copyright © 2023 Silvia Boraso. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2023/01/017


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