From language to literature: The fictionalization of the book in Patrick Chamoiseau’s novels

Abstract

If Patrick Chamoiseau’s work on the issue of language has been amply studied, this article intends to shed new light on it through an analysis of its relation to the printed book, as represented in the Martinician writer’s novel. The purpose of this article is not only to offer a more developed approach of the contrast between oral and written, which takes into account the role played by print, but also to study the ways in which Chamoiseau creates, through the fictionalized book, his own ‘linguistic mythology’. According to Chamoiseau, this is the ultimate goal of literature as it participates in the renewal of linguistic codes. The writer’s political posture, which seeks to determine which approach is more legitimate, the oral language or the written, Creole or French, is replaced with an aesthetic posture focused on the contribution of Chamoiseau’s personal writing style to francophone literature.