Orphan Narratives: The Postplantation Literature of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse

by Valérie Loichot

Overview

In Orphan Narratives, Valérie Loichot investigates the fiction and poetry of four writers who emerged from the postslavery plantation world of the Americas—William Faulkner (USA), Édouard Glissant (Martinique), Toni Morrison (USA), and Saint-John Perse (Guadeloupe)—to show how these descendants from slaves and from slaveholders wrote both in relation and in resistance to the violence of plantation slavery. She uses the term "orphan narrative" to capture the ways in which this violence severed the child, the text, and history from a traceable origin. Black or white, male or female, Antillean or American, these writers share a common inheritance and transnational connection through which their texts maintain familial, temporal, and narrative patterns without having any central authority figure.

The author specifically cites Saint-John Perse’s Éloges (1911), Faulkner’s Light in August (1932), Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977), and Glissant’s La Case du commandeur (1981) as postslavery texts. Where the actual family is dismembered, these narrative accounts invent new familial links. Reciprocally, biological family ties endure despite the literal and discursive violence inflicted upon them.

Breaking new ground in trans-American studies by juxtaposing texts from the francophone Lesser Antilles and the U.S. South, Orphan Narratives will be a valuable addition to Caribbean, American, and postcolonial studies, not to mention its appeal to scholars and students of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813926407
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	05/31/2007
Series:	New World Studies
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Valerie Loichot is Associate Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Emory University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     vii
List of Abbreviations     x
Note on Translation     xi
Introduction: Narrative Orphanage     1
A Plantation Family Portrait     15
Edouard Glissant's Family Grammar: La case du commandeur     37
Saint-John Perse's Shipwrecked Plantation: Eloges     79
William Faulkner's Crossroads: Light in August     117
Toni Morrison's Postplantation: Song of Solomon     157
Conclusion: Postplantation Communities     195
Song of Solomon Family Tree     203
Transfamily Tree     204
Notes     205
Bibliography     229
Index     241

What People are Saying About This

"In this original and perceptive book, Loichot argues for a New World familial network or 'fictive kinship' held together by provocative, disruptive tensions. She makes brilliant use of the theories of Edouard Glissant in this innovative juxtaposition of texts. In an entangled dialogue of 'orphaned narratives,' genealogy is revised and key figures of New World writing are imaginatively connected not in terms of postcolonial theory but through the postplantation poetics of the Other America. -- J. Michael Dash, New York University"Loichot's Orphan Narratives is a rich comparative study that cuts across national and linguistic boundaries. Reading Faulkner through the lens of francophone and anglophone Caribbean theorists, the author engages in a subtle contrapuntal dialogue with Toni Morrison and Edouard Glissant. This compelling and original book privileges what appear to be tensions and frictions within the objects of study so that the series of close readings sheds new light on texts and makes us want to read them again for the first time." -- Mireille Rosello, University of Amsterdam

Mireille Rosello

In this original and perceptive book, Loichot argues for a New World familial network or 'fictive kinship' held together by provocative, disruptive tensions. She makes brilliant use of the theories of Edouard Glissant in this innovative juxtaposition of texts. In an entangled dialogue of 'orphaned narratives,' genealogy is revised and key figures of New World writing are imaginatively connected not in terms of postcolonial theory but through the postplantation poetics of the Other America.—J. Michael Dash, New York University"Loichot's Orphan Narratives is a rich comparative study that cuts across national and linguistic boundaries. Reading Faulkner through the lens of francophone and anglophone Caribbean theorists, the author engages in a subtle contrapuntal dialogue with Toni Morrison and Edouard Glissant. This compelling and original book privileges what appear to be tensions and frictions within the objects of study so that the series of close readings sheds new light on texts and makes us want to read them again for the first time.

Editorial Reviews

In this original and perceptive book, Loichot argues for a New World familial network or 'fictive kinship' held together by provocative, disruptive tensions. She makes brilliant use of the theories of Edouard Glissant in this innovative juxtaposition of texts. In an entangled dialogue of 'orphaned narratives,' genealogy is revised and key figures of New World writing are imaginatively connected not in terms of postcolonial theory but through the postplantation poetics of the Other America.—J. Michael Dash, New York University"Loichot's Orphan Narratives is a rich comparative study that cuts across national and linguistic boundaries. Reading Faulkner through the lens of francophone and anglophone Caribbean theorists, the author engages in a subtle contrapuntal dialogue with Toni Morrison and Edouard Glissant. This compelling and original book privileges what appear to be tensions and frictions within the objects of study so that the series of close readings sheds new light on texts and makes us want to read them again for the first time.

Mireille Rosello

"In this original and perceptive book, Loichot argues for a New World familial network or 'fictive kinship' held together by provocative, disruptive tensions. She makes brilliant use of the theories of Edouard Glissant in this innovative juxtaposition of texts. In an entangled dialogue of 'orphaned narratives,' genealogy is revised and key figures of New World writing are imaginatively connected not in terms of postcolonial theory but through the postplantation poetics of the Other America.—J. Michael Dash, New York University"Loichot's Orphan Narratives is a rich comparative study that cuts across national and linguistic boundaries. Reading Faulkner through the lens of francophone and anglophone Caribbean theorists, the author engages in a subtle contrapuntal dialogue with Toni Morrison and Edouard Glissant. This compelling and original book privileges what appear to be tensions and frictions within the objects of study so that the series of close readings sheds new light on texts and makes us want to read them again for the first time. "—Mireille Rosello, University of Amsterdam

From the Publisher

Water Graves is a brilliant, creative, and attentive paying of respects to the souls and remains of those who have been drowned or improperly mourned within the abysses and gulfs of Caribbean, American, and World history and experience. This is an absolutely timely and important critical work in a moment when we are increasingly divided between 'winners' and 'losers,' at a time when our monuments and memorializing gestures are more loaded than ever, and when we are becoming increasingly aware of accelerating ecological and climatic changes on the planet—forces that augment the unritual and that make us all more prone to water graves. The memorial art and illustrations in these pages are unforgettable.

Keith Cartwright