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Palgrave Macmillan

Hunger and Irony in the French Caribbean

Literature, Theory, and Public Life

  • Book
  • © 2016

Overview

Authors:
  1. Nicole Simek

    1. Dept of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Whitman College, Walla Walla, USA

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  • Focuses on recent, twenty-first century authors such as Condé, Chamoiseau, Pineau, Schwartz-Bart and Glissant, setting it apart from other studies in the field
  • Offers discussion of French Caribbean literature through the lens of irony and hunger - a highly distinctive approach
  • Gathers and builds on existing scholarship

Part of the book series: New Caribbean Studies (NCARS)

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Table of contents (6 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction: Living on the Edge

    • Nicole Simek
    Pages 1-14

  3. Theory or Over-Eating

    • Nicole Simek
    Pages 15-53

  4. Ironic Intent

    • Nicole Simek
    Pages 55-88

  5. In the Belly of the Beast: Irony, Opacity, Politics

    • Nicole Simek
    Pages 89-120

  6. Hunger Pangs: Irony, Tragedy, Constraint

    • Nicole Simek
    Pages 121-148

  7. Thirsty Ruins, Ironic Futures

    • Nicole Simek
    Pages 149-175

  8. Back Matter

    Pages 177-201
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Keywords

About this book

Through a series of case studies spanning the bounds of literature, photography, essay, and manifesto, this book examines the ways in which literary texts do theoretical, ethical, and political work. Nicole Simek approaches the relationship between literature, theory, and public life through a specific site, the French Antillean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, and focuses on two mutually elucidating terms: hunger and irony. Reading these concepts together helps elucidate irony’s creative potential and limits.  If hunger gives irony purchase by anchoring it in particular historical and material conditions, irony also gives a literature and politics of hunger a means for moving beyond a given situation, for pushing through the inertias of history and culture.

Reviews

“Nicole Simek examines the connections between hunger and irony to think through texts from the Antillean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique and situate them within particular social, political, and ethical considerations. … Hunger and Irony is an excellent resource for scholars whose teaching and research specialize in the fields of Postcolonial Theory and Francophone Literary Studies, history and the cultures of the Francophone world.” (Jennifer Boum Make, Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature STTCL, Vol. 42 (2), July, 2018)



“Nicole Simek offers an insightful study of the presence and multiple uses of irony in French Caribbean works that cross generic boundaries … . Simek’s study will be an excellent resource for students and scholars interested in Caribbean cultural productions.” (Véronique Maisier, H-France Review, Vol. 18 (90), April, 2018)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Dept of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Whitman College, Walla Walla, USA

    Nicole Simek

About the author

Nicole Simek is Associate Professor of French and Interdisciplinary Studies at Whitman College, USA. She is the author of Eating Well, Reading Well: Maryse Condé and the Ethics of Interpretation.

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