Francophone Literatures: A Literary and Linguistic Companion by Malcolm Offord , Nicki Hitchcott , Sam Haigh , Rosemary Chapman (review)

212 Reviews Francophone Literatures: A Literary and Linguistic Companion. By Malcolm Offord , La'ila Ibnlfassi, Nicki Hitchcott, Sam Haigh, and Rosemary Chapman . London and New York: Routledge. 2001. ix + 283pp. ?60 (pbk ?18.99). ISBN 0-415-19839-9 (pbk 0-415-19840-2). This collection of thirty extracts from key francophone novels since the 1930s? accompanied by textual commentaries?aims to provide an accessible introductory study aid. The books is divided into four major sections (respectively, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, and North America), each of which contains a succinct historical and cultural overview introduced by a different specialist. The chosen, often lengthy, extracts follow on chronologically by date of composition, and have their own bibliography and literary commentary ('Text and Context') provided by the section specialist, followedby a 'Languageand Style' com? mentary provided by Malcolm Offord throughout. Offord's very detailed linguistic and stylistic analyses usefully illustrate the various methodological perspectives from which literary texts can be studied. The short introduction provides a rationale forthe exclusion of theatre and poetry (in order to focus on the novel), explains the choice of texts (based on the availability of set texts), and justifies the geographical limitations (Belgium and Switzerland are excluded) as enabling more detailed thematic analyses. The introduction provides the essential conceptual and methodological definitions for the linguistic and stylistic analyses. However, while the contributors make clear thematic comparisons between texts in their respective sections, the absence of a substantial thematic overview hinders comparisons across sections on (for example) 'space', gender power relations, and the critique of post-independence regimes. Such an overview would have made more explicit the link between culture and politics at the heart of many francophone novels. In her section on North Africa, Laila Ibnlfassi's very diverse and well-chosen range oftexts (among which Chraibi'sLe Passe simple, Nina Bouraoui'sL<2 Voyeuseinterdite, Tahar Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable and La Nuit sacree) reveal the extent to which the family condenses power relations present at the level of society as a whole?a theme echoed across all sections of the book. Two texts are also included by writers of Algerian origin born in France (Azouz Begag, Mehdi Charef). Nicki Hitchcott's section on Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean provides accessible explanations on, forexample, the colonial gaze (F. Oyono's Une vie de boy) and the epistolary novel (Miriama Ba's Une si longue lettre). There are some stylistically and linguistically challenging extracts (Ahmadou Kourouma's Les Soleils des independances and Sony Labou Tansi's La Vie et demie) that the commentaries explain very thoroughly. Sam Haigh's section on the Caribbean gives due attention to Haitian literatures (Dany Laferriere ,Jacques Roumain) as well as to those of Martinique and Guadeloupe (Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Conde, Daniel Maximin, Simone Schwarz-Bart, among others), particularly in relation to narratives of history, memory, and resistance in contexts where legacies of slavery and colonialism remain very present. At a textual level, the infusion of Creole is closely analysed throughout. In her section on North America, Rosemary Chapman does seek to link themes from francophone Canadian literatures to those from other, more recent, colonial contexts, notably via Antonine Maillet's Pelagie-la Charrette, which chronicles the Acadians' return to the Bay of Fundy in the 1770s after their forcible expulsion by the English. This collection succeeds in showing the development of francophone literatures from a chronological perspective and thereby constitutes a very timely addition to a growing field. University of Leeds JimHouse ...

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