Semiotics and Poetics of the Road in Ferdinand Oyono's <i>Old Negro and the Medal</i>

Abstract

In the novel, even if it is not turned primarily towards the road as in the road novels, the road is a real space-binding whose evocation triggers the immediate perception of the other literary categories such as time, character and narration. The road is also said to be a chronotope, that is to say a literary category of form and content whose study requires the mastery of the interactional functioning of "time-space" and of the other literary categories that contribute to its semantization. But, before any poetic consideration, the road is a linguistic sign whose sociological significance as a system of communication is revealed by semiology and semiotics. As for the novelistic fiction, it reveals this linguistic sign as a complex of presuppositions which is never neutral because, like any space, the road can be connoted positively or negatively and thus determine the movement or the actions of the actants and the circulation of the objects in a given fictional universe. In Ferdinand Oyono's The Old Negro and the Medal, an anti-colonial African novel, the semiotic and poetic analysis of the chronotope "road" begins with an interrogation of its structure and functioning. The road is above all that which, vertically, connects the indigenous neighborhoods and the European neighborhood, but it also designates all those tracks, paths and alleys which, horizontally, connect the indigenous spaces to each other. From the point of view of the functioning of the road, it symbolizes the antagonistic relationships between the African and Western worlds, between the colonized and the colonists. It is euphoric when it leads the old Negro to the commander's house in a friendly manner and very dysphoric when it powerlessly witnesses the drama of the former. As a connecting space, the road counts in the relationship of domination of the natives by the settlers. From an aesthetic point of view, the road is a category of the narrative treated with manner and style in The Old Negro and the Medal. It is evoked not only in a tight and digestible way, that is, in a brachylogical way, but also treated stylistically by the writer in order to increase the level of affectivity in the readers. The writing of the road, thus, creates a literary form in Ferdinand Oyono's novel that can be interpreted as the expression of the social dialectic or even the Manichean vision of the colonial world.