R. Douglas, Frankétienne and Rewriting: A Work in Progress

Rachel Douglas, Frankétienne and Rewriting: A Work in Progress

Lexington Books, 200, 206 p

• Isbn 13: 978-0-7391-2565-6 •

Présentation de l'éditeur:

In Frankétienne and Rewriting, Rachel Douglas introduces the work of important Haitian writer Frankétienne through the prism of his near-obsessive practice of rewriting. This book offers an overview of how the defining aesthetic and thematic components of Frankétienne's major works have emerged over the course of his forty-year writing career. It reveals the marked development of key notions guiding his literary creation since the 1960s, and it demonstrates that rewriting illustrates the central aesthetic of the Spiral, which has always shaped his oeuvre. It is, the book argues, the constantly moving form of the Spiral that Frankétienne explores through his constant reworking of his previously written texts. “Rewriting” in the context of critical work on Caribbean literature has tended to be used to discuss revisionism from a variety of postcolonial perspectives, such “rewriting history” or “rewriting canonical texts”. Focusing specifically on Frankétienne, the book addresses the widespread practice of Caribbean writers rewriting their own literary works. Frankétienne and Rewriting offers theoretical considerations to postcolonial studies on intersections between “literariness” and the material, arguing that literary characteristics in Frankétienne connect with changing political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances in the Haiti he rewrites.

Rachel Douglas is lecturer in Francophone postcolonial studies at the University of Liverpool

Sommaire:

• Introduction
  

• The Birth and Continuation of a Practice of Rewriting: Dézafi (1975) – Les Affres d'un défi (1979) – Dezafi (2002)
  

• Renewing the First Works: Mûr à crever (1968) – Mûr à crever (1995); Ultravocal (1972) – Ultravocal (1995)
  

Representations of Cannibals: L'Oiseau schizophone (1993) – Les Métamorphoses de l'oiseau schizophone (1996-7)
Processes of Rewriting Exemplified: L'Oiseau schizophone (1993) – Les Métamorphoses de l'oiseau schizophone (1996-7)
Conclusion

"Rachel Douglas' timely study offers remarkably insightful close readings of a writer who has for too long remained unknown to all but a few specialists. Moving decisively beyond earlier models of genetic criticism, Douglas' striking proposition is to analyze 'rewriting' as a primary dimension of Frankétienne's literary productivity. Under Douglas' thoughtful gaze, Spiralism stands revealed as a literature in perpetual movement and self-refashioning, one of outrageous invention and exuberant expressivity that alone has the imaginative resources to articulate the unfathomable terror and beauty of Haitian modernity."—Nick Nesbitt, Senior Lecturer in French, School of Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen

"An assured and lively study of a neglected writer. Douglas breaks new ground in her analysis of the role of rewriting in Frankétienne's work; her book marks an important contribution to francophone postcolonial studies, and will be of significant interest to scholars of Caribbean literature in the broadest sense."—Maeve McCusker, Senior Lecturer in French Studies and Chair of the Postcolonial Research Forum at Queens University Belfast