Contrast of Visions in Paule Marshall and Laurent Gaudé’s Novels

Abstract

This article examines two novels written by two writers from distinct nationalities –one is an American citizen and the other is a French citizen; their linguistic landmarks are visibly illustrated in their respective texts. Despite that cultural difference, those exegetes of literature, share common aesthetic values. On the one hand, they cross their geographical boundaries and on the other hand, textualize black Diaspora, Western social realities, African/Western cultures and spaces, thus giving credence to the ideals of globalization. A global policy, which advocates the removal of cultural barriers between countries and human beings. Through creative art, those writers free themselves from every sectarian practice, promote the humanist and open one. Being now world citizens and evolving in a planetary village, they make divergent judgments upon some of the regions of their new ideal society. Black/white characters, through the prism of literary texts, judge Africa and the Western World. Both spaces are poetically praised and denigrated. This perceptive ambivalence is the focus point of the current study, whose anchor is primarily comparative semiotics. By drawing upon its operational principles, this work aims to decipher the semantic network, which emerges from both visions.