Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Questioning the Construction of Dogma
- 1 Past and Present Matter(s): Vernacular Architecture, the Caribbean House, and the Building Blocks of Literature
- 2 Righting/Writing the Faulted House in Édouard Glissant's La Lézarde
- 3 Gouverneurs de la … Mangrove: Architextual Authenticity in Maryse Condé's Traversée de la Mangrove
- 4 Reflections on Interior Design: Daniel Maximin's L'Île et une nuit
- 5 Literature of Reconstruction: An Architextual Assessment of Post-Earthquake Haiti in Yanick Lahens's Failles and Guillaume et Nathalie
- Conclusion: Reconquering Dimensions: No Place Like Home
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion: Reconquering Dimensions: No Place Like Home
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Questioning the Construction of Dogma
- 1 Past and Present Matter(s): Vernacular Architecture, the Caribbean House, and the Building Blocks of Literature
- 2 Righting/Writing the Faulted House in Édouard Glissant's La Lézarde
- 3 Gouverneurs de la … Mangrove: Architextual Authenticity in Maryse Condé's Traversée de la Mangrove
- 4 Reflections on Interior Design: Daniel Maximin's L'Île et une nuit
- 5 Literature of Reconstruction: An Architextual Assessment of Post-Earthquake Haiti in Yanick Lahens's Failles and Guillaume et Nathalie
- Conclusion: Reconquering Dimensions: No Place Like Home
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Ulysses should come home, for there is still a chance that he may do so.
Homer, The OdysseyTel est le drame de l'homme-produit et victime de la colonisation: il n'arrive presque jamais à coïncider avec lui-même.
Albert Memmi, Portrait du coloniséLe Retour et l'obsession de l'Un: il ne faut pas changer l’être. Revenir, c'est consacrer la permanence, la non-relation.
Édouard Glissant, Le Discours antillais[N]e pas célébrer la vie malgré tout, ne pas la transformer par l'art ou la littérature, c'est nous faire terrasser une deuxième fois par la catastrophe.
Yanick Lahens, FaillesAccording to Homer's The Odyssey, it is only after 20 long years of travel, war, and imprisonment that Ulysses makes it home to Ithaca. Although perhaps a little worse for wear due to the suitors who have taken up residence there, his house remains standing; and it is there, seated opposite his wife by the fire, that Ulysses discovers that faithful Penelope no longer recognizes him. Despite having bathed and dressed and, with the help of an adorning Minerva, appeared before his wife looking like one of the immortals, Penelope refuses to see in him the man who took leave of her two decades earlier. When the stranger before her insists that he is her long-departed husband despite all indications to the contrary, she cunningly suggests that Euryclea should remove his bed from their bedroom so that he can sleep in it himself. At which point Ulysses exclaims indignantly:
Who has been taking my bed from the place in which I left it? He must have found it a hard task, no matter how skilled a workman he was, unless some god came and helped him to shift it. There is no man living, however strong and in his prime, who could move it from its place, for it is a marvellous curiosity which I made with my very own hands. There was a young olive growing within the precincts of the house, in full vigour, and about as thick as a bearing-post. I built my room round this with strong walls of stone and a roof to cover them, and I made the doors strong and well-fitting. Then I cut off the top boughs of the olive tree and left the stump standing. […]
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- Architextual AuthenticityConstructing Literature and Literary Identity in the French Caribbean, pp. 257 - 268Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2017