American Francophone Literature: Quebec, Martinique, Haiti

Abstract

the Caribbean, and the south of the United States) (Wagley, 1975: 31-45). Euro-America occupies the two extreme northern and southern ends of the continent, in which the temperate and subarctic climatic zones favored European agricultural colonization and later industrialization and urbanization. During this process, the demographic predominance of European colonists in these areas pushed the influence of the indigenous population into the background in a relatively short time period. Due to all of these factors, the transmission of European culture to these areas also became dominant. These conditions, however, did not prevail in the Indo-American areas, where European colonizers and settlers encountered advanced Native American civilizations and large indigenous populations. Although the newcomers established the dominance of European languages-Spanish and Portuguese-European culture in these areas did not penetrate deep into the majority population. Moreover, acculturation was often (and continues to be) hampered by the isolation and inaccessibility of mountainous areas. Plantation America was not only affected demographically by the massive importation of Black slaves from Africa, but also socially and economically by the plantation monoculture system of sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton. The consequence is a distinct social stratigraphy, often reified in putatively strict racialized divisions. This also corresponds to a linguistic stratification in which the dominant cultural languages of the colonizers-Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese-are confronted with the various varieties of Creole spread extensively throughout certain regions. The broader culture is distinctly diglossic: while Creole is associated with orality and linked to animistic religious ideas and voodoo customs, the written literature adheres to European models. The cultural identity of Plantation America continues to be marked by the trauma of uprooted African populations, separated from their indigenous cultural ties