L’IMPORTANCE DES POINTS DE VUE ET DE LA TEMPORALITE VARIABLES DANS LE COEUR A RIRE ET A PLEURER DE MARYSE CONDE : PROBLEMATISATION D’UN MEMOIRE DE L’ORGANISATION DE LA SOCIETE GUADELOUPEENNE

Abstract

The panorama of the Guadeloupian society painted in Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood appear very simple at a glance. However, a critique assessment of its narrative techniques: use of multiple points of view and temporality reveals a structural and psychologically complex society stamped with the seal of “black skin, white mask†(120) with respect to the Guadeloupian middle class torn between two worlds: their natural world which they detest; and that of metropolitan French whites which they yearn to be part of fruitlessly. Painting this picture, Maryse, whose fingers got burnt several times trying to express things candidly, learns to be subtle, indirect and nuanced in her representation of this society. A very close and rigorous reading of the text is therefore necessary to expose the silences which are revealing of bitter truths in a paradoxically clear and limpid manner in a “jocylenian†fashion; the duplication of the self that gives leverage to says things in a different perspective from one’s own!