Revue de Litterature Comparee - N4/2016: La Bible Et Les Litteratures Postcoloniales

Daniel-Henri PAGEAUX, Religious Thoughts and Biblical Inspiration in the Novels of the Filipino Writer José Rizal (in French), RLC XC, no. 4, oct.dec. 2016, p. 403-416. José Rizal (1861-1896), one of the rare Filipino Spanish speaking writers, wrote two novels: Noli me tangere (Touch Me Not!) and El Filibusterismo (The Reign of Greed). After briefly charting the intellectual trajectory of the author, this article will examine how the Biblical quotes and allusions illustrate an aesthetics of irony, diversion and parody, in an effort to capture his religious and political thinking. The anticlericalism and anticolonialism which permeate Rizal's works call for the postcolonial framework adopted in this study.Chloé ANGUÉ, Catechisms and Bells in Contemporary Polynesian Literatures: From European Echoes to Insular Melodies (in French), RLC XC, no. 4, oct.-dec. 2016, p. 417-434. At the end of the sixteenth century navigators appointed by Spain to carry God’s word to the South Seas brought Polynesia to Europe’s notice. Quickly followed by missionaries who evangelized the South Pacific, the explorers discovered the different islands in the eighteenth century: their log books are at the basis of the fashionable paradise metaphors used to describe tropical islands. It is not surprising that writers born in these archipelagos consider that the Book and the way its word was spread is of primary importance. Now a significant motif in contemporary Polynesian literatures, evangelisation thus reveals the importance of the Bible for an Oceanian postcolonial commitment.Dominique RANAIVOSON, The Bible in the Malagasy Literary Field (in French), RLC XC, no. 4, oct.-dec. 2016, p. 435-455. The Bible translated into Malagasy by the English missionaries, in a central kingdom that became hegemonic in the nineteenth century (the Imerina), became the linguistic reference before becoming the norm for the believers. From this period remains a Malagasy elite, both social (noble), patriotic, intellectual (literary) and Christian (evangelical), who always provides references to the literary field. Contemporary literature, in both Malagasy and French, is the heir of this founding event as well as of traditional oral culture and, for francophone writings, of Western models. This study presents how the Bible can be a model or a counter-model in literature and thus continues to structure the Malagasy literary field.Pierre LEROUX, The Sacred and the Secular, Bible Quotations and Christian Imagery in the Works of Dambudzo Marechera and Tchicaya U Tam’si (in French), RLC XC, no. 4, oct.-dec. 2016, p. 456-468.The Bible, through faithful quotations and wider references, is central in the understanding of the literatures of Sub-Saharan Africa. The work of missionaries in the field of education during and after colonial times accounts for this phenomenon which can be verified in both French speaking and English speaking areas. It is nonetheless essential to stress that the process, far from loyally mimicking the masters’ discourses, gives new meaning to the Bible and its derivative. Through the examples of Dambudzo Marechera and Tchicaya U Tam’si, this article aims at examining the tension thus created between the sacred and the secular. By considering these authors as readers of the Bible, we intend to grasp a better understanding of biblical quotations as instruments caught in a wider web of references. This use of quotations eventually leads to a mystical quest redefining the status of literary texts.Odile GANNIER, God Helps Those Who Help Themselves (in French), RLC XC, no. 4, oct.-dec. 2016, p. 469-488. Contemporary literature in Haiti, as in other Caribbean islands, often deals with narrative elements taken from the Bible. However, as Haiti has been independent since 1804, the combination of religious and postcolonial debates sounds different. Although the Bible is still the final reference, voodooism, after mixing with previous Indian religious beliefs, has been a serious competitor. Biblical parables are commonly used by Haitian writers, with a predilection for messianic prophecies and the Book of Exodus. They also count on Paraclete to back their own efforts. The Bible is usually neither denied nor parodied as a postcolonial argument, but is still used as a weapon for its symbolic content. The so-called theology of liberation is a renewed argument for acting in solidarity with their neighbors as in the traditional community, coumbite.Sandra GONDOUIN, The Figure of Eve in Contemporary Poetry from Central America (in French), RLC XC, no. 4, oct.-dec. 2016, p. 489-502. In Central American literature, colonial tradition has endowed the primordial Biblical couple with a strong symbolic power, which is directly correlated with patriarcal domination. Different conceptions of the relationships between men and women have crystallized around the figures of Adam and Eve. During the 20th century, the representation of Eve and of her relationship with Adam has considerably evolved, in particular from the 70’s onwards and in the works of women poets. These poets have uncovered the symbolic and Biblical links which hinder women. Because they have reshaped the figure of Eve to modify her destiny and that of her descendants, these women poets fully fall within the postcolonial literature framework.Aurélia HETZEL, Black, Beautiful and Post-Colonial. African Queens of Sheba (in French), RLC XC, no. 4, oct.-dec. 2016, p. 503-524. If the myth has known variations, it is alive and keeps being rewritten, it is also sometimes taken ad litteram, exalted in an original purity which has us looking for avatars and descendants, at the peril of nationalisms and racial segregations. So the Queen of Sheba, a symbolic figure of Subsaharian Africa, is sung by the poets of Negritude in the euphoria surrounding Pan-Africanism. After the wave of African Independence movements, what is to become of this black and beautiful queen? She is down and out in squalid Cameroon, she is a prostitute in the bars of Addis Abeba and perishes under the machetes of the Rwandan army and the Interahamwe militiae... The texts of Calixthe Beyala, Tedbabe Telahoun and Scholastique Mukasonga question the female colonized body whose beauty blinds even more than the suns of Independence