Narrational Devices, Discourses of Emancipation: Frankétienne's: Les Affres D'un Défi

Le roman Dezafi de l'Haitien Franketienne est organise a coups d'eclatements successifs. Il n'y a guere d'episode longtemps suivi. La langue fuse et rejaillit en ecumes. [. ] Je medite s'il s'agit la d'une obligation [. ] je mets cela en parallele avec les textes produits en Martinique, lesquels me semblent plus contraints. -Edouard Glissant Le Discours antillais [. ] c'est en 1975 avec la publication du premier roman en creole haitien, Dezafi, que la litterature creolophone, operant la un retour a soi-meme, va trouver ses lettres de noblesse. -Patrick Chamoiseau et Raphael Confiant Lettres creoles Recognized as one of the masterpieces of Caribbean literature, Franketienne's Dezafi (1975) is also the first novel published in Haitian Creole. Commenting on Dezafi, Edouard Glissant notes that "les textes produits en Martinique [. ] semblent plus contraints", and further on he adds: "c'est precisement cela que nous desirons : une litterature qui n'ait pas a forcer" (Glissant, Le Discours antillais 1997, 720 et 778). For their part Jean Bernabe, Patrick Chamoiseau et Raphael Confiant, suggest that, in the repertory of Haitian and Caribbean literature, only two novels exist which demonstrate the facility to which Glissant refers: Glissant's Malemort and Franketienne's Dezafi. Regarding the latter, they write: "[. ] operant aux premiers bourgeonnements d'une creolistique recentree sur ses profondeurs natives, l'ecrivain haitien Franketienne se fit, dans son ouvrage Dezafi, le forgeron et l'alchimiste tout a la fois de la nervure centrale de notre authenticite: le creole recree par et pour l'ecriture" (Bernabe et al., Eloge de la creolite 1989,23). For Chamoiseau and Confiant, Franketienne's text is the expression of "un retour a soi-meme" (Lettres creoles 234). For his part, Glissant identifies an "authenticite" that is common to the ensemble of works that comprise Haitian artistic and literary expression (Discours 1997,464). The novels of "Creole" and "French" expression Dezafi and Les Affres d'un defi express this Haitian authenticity.1 Bernabe, Chamoiseau, Confiant and Glissant recognize this Creole authenticity, but in their elogy of Dezafi, they do not identify the formal elements that determine it. In his book, Des romans de tradition haitienne : sur un recit tragique, Jean Jonassaint responds in part to this exigency. He does not use the notion of authenticity, nor does he analyze Franketienne's novel. Nonetheless, his work interests us for it proposes that "the novel of Haitian tradition" exhibits an ensemble of qualities that are unique to Haitian literature. Jonassaint identifies multiple characteristics, of which almost all may be applied to Dezafi. This article will concentrate on only one of these traits: "un narrateur extra-diegetique se voulant (sujet) haitien qui, simulant une certaine oralite, interpelle diverses instances de la narration, notamment son ou ses narrataire(s) egalement haitien(s)" (Des romans 264). Thus, for both the extra-deictic narrator and his or her narratee(s), the narrational intention is to be "Haitian. " In this article, I propose to show how Franketienne's two novels illustrate Jonassaint's theory. Generally speaking, I will use the French text as the primary source for my literary analysis. Despite the apparent or real opacity of the two novels, both respect an exigent formal structural system that privileges the "narrateur temoin"-the "narrator-as-witness", one of the characteristics that the novels of Haitian tradition share (Jonassaint, Des romans 148). Before a formal analysis, it is useful to note that the exploration of Franketienne's "labyrinthic" prose offers the reader the pleasure of hapless wandering through a text whose movement is unusual and unexpected. On the other hand, the intent of formal analysis is one of comprehension, in other words, a gesture of authority, "parce que dans comprendre il y a l'intention de prendre, de soumettre ce que l'on comprend a l'aune, a l'echelle de sa propre mesure et de sa propre transparence" (Glissant, "Le premier voyage" 126). …