Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal [Notebook of a Return to My Native Land]

Bonnie Thomas (University of Western Australia)

Ed. by David Houston Jones, University of Exeter
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 4.1.2: Francophone Writing and Culture of Central America and the Caribbean.
Vol. editors: Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Maeve McCusker (Queen's University Belfast), David Murphy (University of Strathclyde)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1939

Places

Martinique (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

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Aimé Césaire’s 1939 publication

Cahier d’un retour au pays natal

[

Notebook of a Return to My Native Land

] marked a turning point in French Caribbean literature. Prior to 1930 literary works from the region were characterized by European models and tended towards exoticism. Césaire’s groundbreaking poem laid the foundations for a new literary style in which Caribbean writers came to reject the alienating gaze of the Other in favour of their own Caribbean interpretation of reality. This decisive ideological shift found expression in the political, philosophical and literary theory of

négritude

. First appearing in 1935, the journal

L’Etudiant noir

[

The Black Student

] provided the vehicle for the development of this revolutionary intellectual movement, featuring the work of…

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2288 words

Citation: Thomas, Bonnie. "Cahier d'un retour au pays natal". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 March 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14493, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal [Notebook of a Return to My Native Land]

Dates

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Resources

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