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Négritude and the new poetic language / Aimé Césaire and Notebook of a Return to My Native Land

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2015

Abstract

This work deals with Aimé Césaire's book Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, its function a value for author himself and for reader. At first, the paper explains, using linguistic and semantic analysis of chosen passages of this book, the liberation of author from the literary conventions and forms of his time, the quest of authentic style and his own poetic language.

In the first part, the influence of french literature on Césaire's creation, precisely of Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, is explained. Afterwards, the work focuses on the emancipation tendencies which consist in the organic incorporation of the surrealistic practices and of creole influence into his poetry.

In the second part, the paper attempts to give a description of author's determination to liberate the oppressed people, by the society, and his seeking of a new identity, based on omitted history of this people, on his ancestors and mainly on his forgotten roots. In the first place, indirect influence of the colonialism: his cruelty, enslavement, Triangular trade on Césaire's literary creation is described.

The aim is to show the attitude of the author to the suffering of slaves and how he describes it to the reader and how he uses his heroes to accuse the colonialism of his cruel and usually atrocious practices to regain proud for his people.