Édouard Glissant
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Edouard Glissant (born in Sainte-Marie, Martinique in 1928) is a Francophone writer, poet and literary critic. He is widely recognised as being one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary.
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[edit] Biography
A student of Aimé Césaire's at the Lycée Schoelcher in Fort-de-France, Glissant later received his PhD, having studied ethnography at the Musée de l'Homme and History and philosophy at the Sorbonne. He established the separatist Front antillo-guyanais party in 1959, which provoked his exile from 1959 to 1965 from his native island. He returned to Martinique in 1965 and founded the Institut martiniquais d'études, as well as Acoma, a social sciences publication. He now divides his time between Martinique, Paris and New York, where he has been visiting professor of French Literature at CUNY since 1995 .
[edit] Writings
Shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1992, when Derek Walcott emerged as the recipient, Glissant is the pre-eminent critic of the Négritude school of Caribbean writing and father-figure for the subsequent Créolité group of writers which includes Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant. While his first novel portrays the political climate in 1940s Martinique, through the story of a group of young revolutionaries, his subsequent work focuses on questions of language, identity, space and history. Glissant's development of the notion of antillanité seeks to root Caribbean identity firmly within "the Other America" and springs from a critique of identity in previous schools of writing, specifically the work of Aimé Césaire, which looked to Africa for its prinicpal source of identification. He is notable for his attempt to trace parallels between the history and culture of the Creole Caribbean and those of Latin America and the plantation culture of the American south, most obviously in his study of William Faulkner. Generally speaking, his thinking seeks to interrogate notions of centre, origin and linearity, embodied in his distinction between atavistic and composite cultures, which has influenced subsequent Martinican writers' trumpeting of hybridity as the bedrock of Caribbean identity and their "creolised" approach to textuality. As such he is both a key (though underrated) figure in postcolonial literature and criticism, but also (albeit less often recognised) firmly aligned with the French post-structuralist school of Derrida and Barthes to which there are allusions in his work.
[edit] Bibliography
Novels:
- La Lézarde. (1958) Nouvelle édition, Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
- Le Quatrième Siècle. (1964) Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
- Malemort. (1975). Nouvelle édition, Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
- La Case du commandeur. (1981) Nouvelle édition, Paris: Galliamard, 1997.
- Mahagony. (1987) Nouvelle édition, Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
- Tout-Monde. Paris: Gallimard, 1995.
- Sartorius: le roman des Batoutos. Paris: Gallimard, 1999.
- Ormérod. Paris: Gallimard, 2003.
Poetry:
- La Terre inquiète. Lithographies de Wilfredo Lam. Paris: Éditions du Dragon, 1955.
- Le Sel Noir. Paris: Seuil, 1960.
- Les Indes, Un Champ d'îles, La Terre inquète. Paris: Seuil, 1965.
- L'Intention poétique. (1969) (Poétique II) Nouvelle édition, Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
- Boises; histoire naturelle d'une aridité. Fort-de-France: Acoma, 1979.
- Le Sel noir; Le Sang rivé; Boises. Paris: Gallimard, 1983.
- Pays rêvé, pays réel. Paris: Seuil, 1985.
- Fastes. Toronto: Ed. du GREF, 1991.
- Poèmes complets. (Le Sang rivé; Un Champ d'îles; La Terre inquiète; Les Indes; Le Sel noir; Boises; Pays rêvé, pays réel; Fastes; Les Grands chaos). Paris: Gallimard, 1994.
- Le Monde incréé: Conte de ce que fut la Tragédie d'Askia; Parabole d'un Moulin de Martinique; La Folie Célat. Paris: Gallimard, 2000.
Essays:
- Soleil de la conscience. (1956) (Poétique I) Nouvelle édition, Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
- Le Discours antillais. (1981) Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
- Poétique de la Relation. (Poétique III) Paris: Gallimard, 1990.
- Discours de Glendon. Suivi d'une bibliographie des écrits d'Edouard Glissant établie par Alain Baudot. Toronto: Ed. du GREF, 1990.
- Ethnicité d'aujourd'hui Paris : gallimard, 2005.
- Racisme blanc. Paris: Gallimard, 1998
- Introduction à une poétique du divers. (1995) Paris: Gallimard, 1996.
- Faulkner, Mississippi. Paris: Stock, 1996; Paris: Gallimard (folio), 1998.
- Traité du Tout-Monde. (Poétique IV) Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
- La Cohée du Lamentin. (Poétique V) Paris: Gallimard, 2005.
Theatre
- Monsieur Toussaint. (1961) Nouvelle édition: Paris: Gallimard, 1998.
