Patrick Chamoiseau: A Critical Introduction

by Wendy Knepper

Overview

Patrick Chamoiseau: A Critical Introduction examines the career, oeuvre, and literary theories of one of the most important Caribbean writers living today. Chamoiseau's work sheds light on the dynamic processes of creolization that have shaped Caribbean history and culture. He is the recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the prestigious Prix Goncourt for the epic novel Texaco. The author's diverse body of work, which includes plays, novels, fictionalized memoirs, treatises, and other genres of writing, offers a compelling vision of the postcolonial world from a francophone Caribbean perspective.

An important addition to Caribbean literary studies, Patrick Chamoiseau is an indispensable work for scholars interested in francophone, Caribbean, and world literatures as well as cultural studies. Scholars and students with interests in creolization, neocolonialism, and globalization will find this work particularly valuable.

Patrick Chamoiseau brings the writer's major works of fiction into dialogue with lesser-known texts, including unpublished theatrical works, screenplays, visual texts, and treatises. This holistic, comprehensive, and largely chronological study of Chamoiseau's oeuvre includes analyses of various authorial strategies, especially the use of narrative masques, cross-cultural storytelling techniques, and creolizing poetics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617031557
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	01/09/2012
Series:	Caribbean Studies Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Wendy Knepper, London, England, is a lecturer in English at Brunel University in Uxbridge, England. Her work has appeared in PMLA, Small Axe, Dalhousie French Studies, and in numerous essay collections.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Chronology xi

Abbreviations xv

1 Contexts and Intertexts 3

2 Insurgent Performance Works 32

3 Vernacular Forms and Wandering Genres 59

4 Creolite, Community, and the Word Scratcher 95

5 Autoethnographic Fictions of Childhood 130

6 Initiating the Warrior of the Imaginary 154

7 Visual Texts and the Revolutionary Epic 185

8 Activism and Tales of Initiation 212

Notes 239

Select Bibliography 261

Index 271

Editorial Reviews

"Patrick Chamoiseau: A Critical Introduction offers a wide-ranging and richly-documented discussion of the multifaceted work of one of the most remarkable and versatile figures of contemporary Caribbean letters. Wendy Knepper very skillfully traces Patrick Chamoiseau's development as an artist and thinker, and she does so with a keen awareness of the major debates surrounding postcolonial literatures in the Antilles and beyond. A most enlightening volume packed with precious information on, and original insights into, Chamoiseau's writing—not only his bestsellers but also his lesser-known production, such as drama and children's literature."

—Bénédicte Ledent, editor of Bridges Across Chasms: Towards a Transcultural Future in Caribbean Literature

"Not just a perceptive and carefully-researched study of the activist and writer, Knepper's book offers one of the best accounts of the political and philosophical contexts in which Chamoiseau writes. Her lucid monograph is a welcome contribution to the field of francophone Caribbean studies."

—J. Michael Dash, author of The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context

"Throughout the twentieth century, the island of Martinique has produced a dazzling array of world-historical intellectuals, amongst who can be counted Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon and Edouard Glissant. To this pantheon should be added Patrick Chamoiseau. To decode his rich output, Wendy Knepper brings the skills which derive from outstanding scholarship of the highest order, seeking to present Chamoiseau to an Anglophone audience who might only partially be attuned to the timbre of his Creolized prose."

—Bill Schwarz, author of The White Man's World, vol. 1 of the Memories of Empire trilogy

From the Publisher