La construction de l'imaginaire du retour dans «Pays sans chapeau» et «L'Énigme du retour» de Dany Laferrière
Through what he names his "American autobiography" formed by ten novels, Dany Laferrière creates a multifaceted universe dealing with childhood, adolescence, dictatorship, the departure and the return to one’s native land. Both Pays sans chapeau and L’Énigme du retour explore the theme of the return to one’s native land by using a character-narrator whose discursive ethoses, that is the images of oneself created within and by a discourse, are multiplied. While they are rediscovering the country, the narrators present themselves for instance as the reader, the son, the writer, the traveler, the member of an exiled community, the reporter, the stranger, etc. The identitarian mobility of the narrators allows us to connect those novels with the autofiction genre, as well as the study of the settings and the experience of returns in both cases. Furthermore, when the narrators present themselves to the readers as a writer, their literary knowledge is revealed and their vision of the country is enriched by their literary memories.  In this thesis, we propose to study the strategies of representation of one’s native land and to question the possibility of the narrators’ return. To do so, we will attempt to bring out and to define the discursive ethoses that appear crucial in the novels. Then, we will develop the narrative identity of the writer in order to explore the narrators’ literary memories by studying the implicit and the explicit intertexts. Finally, we will bring forward the possibility of returning to one’s native land by writing.
Dany Laferrière autofiction return to one’s native land intertextuality contemporary haitien novel