The Poetic Legacy of Aimé Césaire
in French Politics, Culture & Society
Author:
Francis Abiola Irele
Francis Abiola Irele
Search for other papers by Francis Abiola Irele in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Search for other papers by Francis Abiola Irele in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
All currencies in US Dollar
This essay examines the centrality of Aimé Césaire's work in the emergence of a black poetic and intellectual discourse in French, and his influence, in terms both of theme and idiom, on generations of Francophone writers, an influence that can be discerned in the work of Tchikaya u Tamsi, Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard, Lamine Sall and Sylvie Kandé in Africa, and Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, René Depestre, and Daniel Maximin in the French Caribbean region. The relationship of Césaire's work to the Créolité movement is discussed, as is the impact of his work on Anglophone Caribbean writers, such as Kamau Brathwaite of Barbados and Lansana Sekou of St Martin, as evidence of the enduring legacy of his work.