Inscrutable Islands: Narrative Difficulty and the Rhetoric of Creolization in Twentieth-Century Caribbean Novels

<p>Anglophone and Francophone theories of creolization make claims for Caribbean cultural identity; however these theories primarily concern themselves with operations of perception between and among different cultures, language speakers, races, and classes of people. This perception occurs at the meeting point of social differences, and the theorists employ a rhetoric of metaphor and figurative language to describe it as obscured or otherwise inhibited. Ultimately, this mode of perception is homologous with the interaction between a difficult literary text and its readers. This mode becomes instantiated in literary forms such as embedded and framing narratives, temporal gaps, and indeterminate narrators. Theorists of creolization claim that obscured perception enacts a form of cultural and political resistance. However, in the novels of Patrick Chamoiseau, Erna Brodber, Jean Rhys, Maryse Condé, Édouard Glissant, and Wilson Harris, difficult narrative forms can instead entrench social divisions and hierarchies.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Comparative Literature

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Hutchins, Jessica

Contributors dc:contributor

• J. Dillon Brown

• caribbean
• créolité
• creolization
• difficulty
• narrative
• perception

Language dc:language

English (en)

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7936/K7XD0ZQR

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:etd-2382