French Literature Reviews - 2026

Valérie LOICHOT, Orphan Narratives : The Postplantation Literature of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse
Comparative and World Literature

Valérie LOICHOT, Orphan Narratives: The Postplantation Literature of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press (New World Studies), 2007, 256 p.
ISBN 978-0-8139-264i-4

ABSTRACT

In Orphan Narratives, Valérie Loichot investigates the fiction and poetry of four writers who emerged from the postslavery plantation world of the Americas—William Faulkner (USA), Édouard Glissant (Martinique), Toni Morrison (USA), and Saint-John Perse (Guadeloupe)—to show how these descendants of slaves and of slaveholders wrote both in relation and in resistance to the violence of plantation slavery. She uses the term “orphan narrative” to capture the ways in which this violence severed the child, the text, and history from a traceable origin. Black or white, male or female, Antillean or American, these writers share a common inheritance and transnational connection through which their texts maintain familial, temporal, and narrative patterns without having any central authority figure.

The author specifically cites Saint-John Perse's Éloges (1911), Faulkner's Light in August (1932), Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977), and Glissant's La Case du commandeur (1981) as postslavery texts. Where the actual family is dismembered, these narrative accounts invent new familial links. Reciprocally, biological family ties endure despite the literal and discursive violence inflicted upon them.

Breaking new ground in trans-American studies by juxtaposing texts from the francophone Lesser Antilles and the U.S. South, Orphan Narratives will be a valuable addition to Caribbean, American, and postcolonial studies, not to mention its appeal to scholars and students of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse.

BIOGRAPHY

Valérie Loichot is Associate Professor in the Department of French and Italian at Emory University.

The postslavery plantation world of the Americas produced a complex body of literature in which writers from the United States and the Caribbean confronted the enduring legacies of slavery. Scholars in trans-American and postcolonial studies frequently examine how texts from the francophone Lesser Antilles and the U.S. South intersect through shared historical traumas. By bringing together authors across linguistic and geographical boundaries, this field explores the ways modern literature articulates cultural memory, diaspora, and transnational identities following the collapse of plantation societies.

Valérie Loichot investigates the fiction and poetry of William Faulkner, Édouard Glissant, Toni Morrison, and Saint-John Perse to show how descendants of slaves and slaveholders wrote in relation and resistance to the violence of plantation slavery. The study explores how dismembered actual families and severed histories lead to the invention of new familial links, while biological ties endure despite discursive violence. Readers interested in comparative approaches to Caribbean and American literature may find this work relevant to their studies.