L'esthétique du métissage dans l'oeuvre romanesque d'Henri Lopes

Abstract

Literary critical discourse nowadays tends to classify African texts within global literature by drawing links among works through writing. Therefore, to achieve this purpose, African writers use forms and poetics of hybridity, intertextuality, and intergenericity. Besides the multilingualism analysis, this dissertation is intended to approach the corpus by analyzing themes pertaining to a mixed writing style (métissage) and formal study of intertextuality and intergenericity, which are hypothesized to be specific characteristics of Lopes’ writing. This study looked into intertextuality as a formal intermingled writing to the extent that intertextuality is understood as a process that puts together two or multiple texts through diverse writing mechanics. Thus, in addition to scrutinizing the theme of blended writing («métissage de l’écriture»), the study pointed out that Lopes’ literary practices greatly hinge on the integration and transformation of other texts from various origins, including the Bible; antique and contemporary philosophical theories; works and dissertations of famous Afro-Caribbean writers (Senghor, Oyono, Fanon etc.); French literature texts, mostly those dating back to the Middle Ages, Renaissance, classical century (intertextuality); and other genres such as tales, proverbs, songs, biographies, letters, testimonies (intergenericity). How does this double principle play out, and what are its inherent techniques? We attempted to answer this question by drawing mainly on Lopes’ four novels characterized by the blended writing, more specifically Le chercheur d’Afriques (1990), Le lys et le flamboyant (1997), Dossier classé (2002), and Une enfant de Poto-Poto (2013). The four novels uniquely echo the Bakhtinian dialogic principle from which intertextuality and intergenericity practices derive. We primarily used, among other frameworks, Gerard Genette’s transtextuality and hypertextuality theories to identify and analyze transformation and integration mechanics of other texts, which Lopes utilized. Josias Semujanga’s works on the African novel specifically helped demonstrate transcultural and transgeneric dimension of the works under study. Such tools and information enabled us to reach the level of understanding that Lopes’ literary art aims at deconstructing the traditional novel logic and placing his works in the aesthetics movement of heterogeneity and universality that is advocated by global literature and postmodernism.