| Inscribed in the field of history and theory of slavery studies, and that of francophone postcolonial studies, this dissertation explores the cultural legacy on French literature, by one particular form of slavery, that practiced on Africans by European colonial powers, among whom France was a major force. It examines works of eight metropolitan French writers --- Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Claire de Duras, Marceline Desbordes-Valmores, Charles de Remusat, Sophie Doin, Victor Hugo, George Sand and Honore de Balzac, that engaged with the Old Colonies --- the islands in the East and the West Indies --- from the late 1780s till slavery's final abolition in French colonies in 1848. From the perspective of the universal history, the single most important event during this period was the Haitian Revolution, through the suppression of which, an impoverished version of "the Enlightenment" triumphed over a true universalism. Analyzing literary works that mirror, contest, and challenge the violence of history from a spectrum of positions, this project preoccupies itself with the relationship between literary form, historical violence, and, political commitment. It argues that if the overthrow of slavery was an ethical and political problem, it is high time that literary criticism make ethical and political commitment too, through a "politics of reading."... |
