et la clef (1945) alludes to this past glory.2 2 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.
3 3 Although they are widely presented as cousins, Françoise Vergès notes that they were not related by blood (1999, 306).
4 4 See Küstler (2010) for a strong presentation of the duo’s work in establishing a colonial‐minded museum in Réunion.
5 5 See Lionnet (1998) for a critique of Baudelaire’s exoticism and especially of the continued view of Mauritius through a perpetuation of the tendencies of colonialism, whereby the specific island culture and the details of history that this poet offers within his exoticism undergo erasure.
6 6 Authors who participate in creolization but wish to extricate themselves from going further to associate Creole with a local culture to the point that it becomes contentious with French are Jean‐François Samlong and Jean‐Claude Thing Leoh. Jean‐Georges Prosper, the Mauritian critic, deals with this ambiguity himself when he adopts their term “créolie” and assumes it stands in for Réunionness, thus distancing himself from that movement as a Mauritian. Gauvin’s work stands against this conciliatory position that cannot hold up when linked to actual Creole language, its status, and its speakers.
7 7 The strong presence of African languages in Indian Ocean Creole has been argued by linguists Baker and Corne, but Africanness remains elusive in Mauritius’ “plurality,” with some exceptional spaces such as the poetry of Edouard Maunick. Réunion’s Frenchness has not invited Indianness or Africanness in any overt cultural sense. Nonwhites can be racially identified while some reclamation of cultural specificity and belonging has occurred in the literature, for example, through Chinese‐inspired poetry and writers reconfiguring their heritage by recovering history. Axel Gauvin’s semi‐autobiographical Faims d’enfance (Hungers in Childhood) joins up with diasporic Indian writing.
8 8 Another novel by Humbert which is explicitly set in Mauritius is Montagne des signaux (Signal Mountain). The author moved to France before she began her writing career, or at least before we have evidence of it through published work.
9 9 See Prabhu (2010, 115–134). Devi’s other novels are equally daring. Some titles worth reading are: Indian Tango (2007), a provocative novel set in India that explores an erotic relationship between two unlikely women; Rue la Poudrière (Powder Keg Street, 1989), deftly commented on by Françoise Lionnet (1995); and the poetic and abstract Moi, L’Interdite (Me, the Forbidden One, 2000) and Le Sari vert (Green Sari, 2009).
10 10 Christiane Nativel‐Forrestier’s A l’ombre des Marrons promises much by the title (In the shadow of the Maroons) but turns out to be a rather bland story that uses the mountainous setting of the former slaves.
11 11 L’Affranchi (The Emancipated Slave, 1996) by prolific writer Daniel Vaxelaire is notable in this context, as are a range of his novels. French authors Sophie Cherer and Ariane Bois have brought attention to Réunion’s relationship with France with La vraie couleur de vanille (The Real Color of Vanilla, 2012) and L'île aux enfants (The Children’s Island, 2019), respectively.
12 12 The tales about Grandmère Kalle reconnect with African heritage in Réunion. In Mauritius a notable exception is the métis poet Edouard Maunick, whose poetry reached out to ally with négritude, and who was engaged with Africa. See his Fusillez‐moi (Shoot Me), written in protest against Africans killing one another in Nigeria, or “Jusqu’en Terre Yoruba” (Up to Yoruba Land). It is interesting that L’affaire de l’esclave Furcy (The Case of Furcy the Slave, 2011), based on court documents that were released in 2005 of the longest case of a slave who filed a case in Bourbon (Réunion) in 1817 against his master demanding his freedom, was written by the Algerian‐French journalist Mohammed Asïssaoui. Music, and particularly the sega and its dance, is the strongest articulation of an Indian Ocean Creole culture that embraces many influences including African and Malagasy roots.
5 The Representation of Nation and National Identity in Modern Amharic Literature
Tewodros Gebre
Ethiopian literature in Amharic with its long written tradition has engaged readers for centuries. The panegyric is the first Amharic literary document that was said to have been written in the fourteenth century during the reign of Emperor Amda‐Tseyon (1315–1344). The literariness of the panegyrics that followed in the honor of five of the kings, who ruled during the sixteenth century, got even better (Admassu 2006). One of the policies that Emperor Tewodros II (1855–1868), who is considered as the national unity architect, modernization trendsetter, and symbol of national pride par excellence, adopted to realize his vision made Amharic a national language. Consequently, state formation and nation building – Emperor Tewodros’ politico‐cultural mission – have become crucial factors in Amharic literature.
Amharic is given more preference in creative writing as opposed to colonial languages. Because Ethiopia escaped from colonization, Amharic was able to survive as an official language: “Amharic literature has matured fast – a result of having and using a national language that is indigenous to the country, a situation unfortunately rare in Africa” (Molvaer 1997, xvi). Amharic literature, however, became deeply entrenched during the reign of Emperor Menelik II (1889–1913) as a result of the modernization of the government and the establishment of the Imperial printing press.
Amharic literature is unique for various reasons. It exhibits the state of being distinct; as Fellman (2004, 186) aptly observed, it is a “rich and most interesting literary corpus,” but “much‐neglected and often maligned” as it hides itself from exposure. One of the unique points of Amharic literature is the fact that it inherited 2,000 years of unique orthography, andemta commentary (Ethiopic biblical interpretation), genres, and thematics from the long‐established Geʿez literary tradition. Some of the most persistent and enduring themes that Amharic literature took from Geʿez and transformed are Ethiopia’s nationhood and home‐grown nationalism. Although claiming nationalism from a distant time may seem far‐fetched, the prominent nationalism scholar Donald Levine argues that “Japan and Ethiopia had developed nationalist cultures as early as a millennium before their putative origins in Western Europe” (2011, 312).
Kebra Nagast is one example of a literary work that exemplifies “historic” Ethiopia’s possession of the long‐lasting “nationalism,” which is a stunning archetype for modern nationalism. The Kebra Nagast (Glory of the Kings), a Geʿez text compiled in the fourteenth century, is a foundational narrative for the historic Ethiopia. As Yonas Admassu aptly characterizes it, Kebra Nagast is a “uniquely Ethiopian” narrative, which “is the first, perhaps even the only, relatively complete work consciously and deliberately geared to the glorification of the land, its king, and its people” (1995, 47–48).
The purpose of Kebra Nagast was to serve as a source of the divine right of the royal family that was said to be a descendant of King Solomon. It narrates the story of the birth of Menelik
