The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction

Abstract

The Sense of Community in French Caribbean Fiction seeks to better understand the concept of community as a central and problematic issue in French Caribbean literature. The study examines representations of community in seven French Caribbean novels, including Jacques Roumain’s Gouverneurs de la rosée, Edouard Glissant’s Le Quatrième Siècle, Simone Schwarz-Bart’s Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle, Vincent Placoly’s L’Eau-de-mort guildive, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Texaco, Daniel Maximin’s L’Ile et une nuit, and Maryse Condé’s Desirada. Each novel is discussed in chronological order, demonstrating a progressive move away from the ‘closed’ community towards a newer sense of an ‘open’ community. In this study, Britton offers an understanding of the postcolonial societies of the Caribbean by looking at French Caribbean literature’s role in the creation of community. The seven novels analysed reveal a correlation between a tightly knit, purposeful community and a linear narrative that ends in definitive resolution, and, conversely, between a dispersed or heterogeneous community and a narrative structure that avoids linearity and closure.