Le conte, une parole circulaire et alluvionnaire (Damas, Haurigot, Saint-Quentin)

Abstract

Transmission, which involves sending a text beyond a given context, and which constitutes one of the functions of literature, presents numerous and varied forms in the Caribbean. At the level of Guyanese storytelling, such authors as Alfred de Saint-Quentin, Georges Haurigot, and Leon Gontran Damas can evoke, repeat and decline the word of ancestors or identity problems with traditional tales (“The Negro, the Indian and the White” and “The Three Brothers” in this instance). The storyteller’s voice tends to renew itself, to convoke a creative impulse apt at founding a cultural cohesion for the Caribbean Basin. The narrator-storyteller can be compared to a guide seeking to signpost the path and bring together an entire people in the foundational word of human relationships.