Language and Literary Form in French Caribbean Writing

This book analyses French Caribbean writing from the point of view of its language and literary form - questions which until recently were somewhat neglected in postcolonial studies but are now becoming an important area of research. Britton supplements postcolonial theory with structuralism and poststructuralism to show how analysis of the textual illuminates the political and ideological positions of the writers. Topics including genre, intertextuality, narrative voice, discursive agency, orality, the ‘creolization’ of languages and the renewal of realism are discussed in relation to Glissant, Césaire, Ménil, Chamoiseau, Confiant, Depestre, Condé, Schwarz-Bart, Pineau and Maximin.

'Britton makes an unanswerable case for a rebalancing of textually-based and world-based reading, a rebalancing of critical attention to language and form on the one hand, representation and political positioning on the other.' Mary Gallagher, This publication, though consisting of previously published material, in its cumulative effect and sustained attention across the field as a whole, demonstrates the incisive originality and intelligence of this outstanding reader of French Caribbean literature.French Studies, 'This remarkable book unravels the links between theoretical and philosophical discourses (Benveniste, Lacan, Barthes, Kristeva, Bakhtin, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, feminist philosophy) and French Caribbean writers from Martinique and Guadeloupe (Me´nil, Chamoiseau, Confiant, Schwartz-Bart, Conde´, Maximin, Glissant).'Richard Langer, Oxford Journals, 'Britton is persuasive in arguing for the need to reevaluate the study of the formal aspects of literary texts produced in the French Caribbean. As she makes clear, eventually neither (post)structuralist nor postcolonial theory fully does justice to all French Caribbean texts. In concise chapters, the broad corpus she brings together establishes the way in which formal and textual analysis also uncovers the implications of the political.'Jacqueline Couti, New West Indian Guide

Celia Britton is Emeritus Professor at University College London.