Abstract
Patrick Chamoiseau’s Creole Folktales (1988) makes a concerted effort to reproduce the oral storytelling of the Creole slaves of the French Antilles in order to explore and promote the cultural and literary notion of “Creoleness.” In his collection, Chamoiseau reworks the themes of hunger, dreams, and speech so central to Creole oral narratives. But Creole Folktales is anything but a collection of folkloric transcriptions. By rewriting Creole folktales, Chamoiseau valorizes the orality of the Creole past as a means of unsettling the fixity of writing as defined by the colonial and postcolonial West.
Recommended Citation
Seifert, Lewis C.. "Orality, History, and “Creoleness” in Patrick Chamoiseau’s Creole Folktales." Marvels & Tales 16.2 (2002). Web. <https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/marvels/vol16/iss2/6>.
