The Theme of the Ancestral Crime in the Novels of Faulkner, Glissant and Condé
The Theme of the Ancestral Crime in the Novels of Faulkner, Glissant and Condé
This chapter examines William Faulkner's theme of ancestral crime and his influence on two Caribbean novels: Édouard Glissant's Le Quatrième Siécle (1964) and Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove (1989). Glissant sees Faulkner's novels as showing the impossibility of founding a pure lineage. In Le Quatrième Siécle, Glissant reworks Faulkner's interest with ancestral crime or the ‘original sin’ that has to do with the foundation of a lineage. Condé's allusions to Faulknerian themes differ from Glissant's in the sense that she is not at all interested in the idea of founding a lineage: the hidden crimes in her case are not original but are ancestral.
Keywords: William Faulkner, ancestral crime, Édouard Glissant, Le Quatrième Siécle, and Maryse Condé, Traversée de la mangrove, lineage
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