Another History: the work of Simone Schwarz-Bart

Abstract

Simone Schwarz-Bart has created a body of work that contains numerous expressions and words belonging to the Creole world. Starting from an aesthetic of the oral, her work reconstructs a history marked by discontinuity and rupture. It incorporates songs, riddles, tales and proverbs, thus giving a new dimension to the French language. These components of the oral tradition, as well as the myth, infuse the entire work with a magical-religious presence, which together form the essence of this other History of Guadeloupe. This article briefly explores the issues of oral and written traditions, as well as the reciprocities that are established between literature and history in the works of Simone Schwarz-Bart. The author constructs a rhythmic narrative, where words and images open us up to Caribbean oral culture. She transcribes the oral into the written word, without neglecting the importance of the psychological, political, social and ethical elements that dominate Caribbean idiosyncrasy. The discourse of everyday life and the formal structures of the Antillean tale (among other expressions of oral tradition) result from the reformulation of a historical context that is specifically Guadeloupean. Her work thus proposes an oral aesthetic from a perspective anchored in the memory of a plural and diverse History of the Caribbean archipelago.