Abstract (eng)
Who speaks in a narrative text? In accordance with Genette the answer would be: the narrative voice. Analogous to oral communication, the metaphor of “voice” suggests an individual source of enunciation in the form of a “narrator”. However, this conception of the narrative instance is in opposition to strategies subverting the construction of the narrator, who, as the unique and uniform originator of the narrative discourse, ensures the organic unity of the discourse and the constitution of sense. In this thesis, such strategies are subsumed under the concept of “multiple narration” (narration multiple).
The three authors analyzed belong to the francophone literary avant-garde. The narration of the three novels - Le Temps de Tamango (1981) by Boubacar Boris Diop (Senegal), L’Amour, la fantasia (1985) by Assia Djebar (Algeria) and Solibo Magnifique (1988) by Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique) – is extremely complex: the configuration of the narrative voice is polyphonic, fragmented, stratified, often ambivalent, sometimes even contradictory, and always self-reflexive.
Despite their conspicuous nature, there are scarcely any systematic analyses and only few single case studies of multiple-narration scenarios, their function, and underlying issues in the francophone novel published in the 1980s, period in which the francophone novel prospers and diversifies.
The three novels analyzed in this thesis have in common the respective authors’ endeavors to reposition their literary production and to develop a self-determined literary expression. However it is worth noting that these novels do not constitute a homogenous literary movement. The authors’ efforts to assert their proper and distinctive literary identity become manifest most notably on the level of form: by breaking up traditional narrative structures, these writers seek to distinguish themselves both from the European model and from certain writing practices of a former francophone generation of novelists, the conspicuous narrative configurations as well as a poetic of fragmentation and irreducible diversity becoming a trademark of these novels.
What are the specific narrative configurations put in place in the three novels? In what way do these narrative structures act as a legitimizing device? These re¬search questions are addressed through analysis of the narrative configurations in terms of their signifying impact (role as signifiers) and association of these narra¬tive structures with the ubiquitous meta-reflexive discourse on representation that characterizes the three novels. In doing so, this thesis aims to explicate in which way – on the formal level – these multiple narration scenarios translate, negotiate or even overcome the difficulties and ambivalences the various narrative instances are facing.
On the institutional level, those narrative innovations and experimentations oper-ate as acts of positioning within the French literary field given that they are aimed at vindicating the authors’ claim to a proper literary expression.
On the textual level, enunciation operates as a legitimizing device of the fictional narrative act. Therefore the configuration of enunciation is of great importance for both authorizing the narrative instances and showing the problems of their discursive practices.