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- Title
THE NORTHERN RÉCIT PAYSAN: REGIONAL VARIATIONS OF THE MODERN PEASANT NOVEL IN HAITI.
- Authors
STIEBER, CHELSEA
- Abstract
In a revisionist reading of the Haitian peasant novel, this article addresses the short shrift given to Haiti's regionalism in scholarship, a lacuna that social geographer Georges Anglade attributes to 'les effets d'occultation propre à la structure dominante centralisée'. Contrary to Port-au-Prince-centric renderings of Haitian literary history, which locate the elaboration of the modern peasant novel in the elite (read: Port-au- Princean) intelligentsia's quest for a more authentic national identity, I show that the modern peasant novel emerged in the pages of the northern literary magazine Stella (Cap-Haïtien, 1926-30) out of a primarily regional context. Through a close reading of several short and virtually unstudied récits paysans published in Stella, I argue that northern writers deployed the peasant novel genre as a regional response to the process of centralization and regional 'occultation' by the centralized nation-state apparatus. In particular, I examine how the lived experience of dramatic demographic and economic decline in the north informed the specific contours of this new literary expression.
- Subjects
PEASANTS' writings; LITERARY magazines; HAITIAN history; REGIONALISM; HAITIAN fiction; HAITIAN social conditions; CARIBBEAN periodicals; TWENTIETH century; HISTORY
- Publication
French Studies, 2016, Vol 70, Issue 1, p44
- ISSN
0016-1128
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/fs/knv301