Literary fiction and pictorial imagination in Dany Laferriere's written productions

This dissertation explores a specific aspect of Haitian Canadian writer, and member of French Academy, Dany Laferriere’s literary production: the relationship between literary fiction and the pictorial imagination that structures his different writings. This relationship manifests itself, for instance, in all of his corpus, specifically in Enigma of return (2009) where many descriptions of certain Haitian daily realities are compared to “A naive painting.” This process can be interpreted as quest by Laferrière to find a “plastic,” or visual equivalent to his style of writing. Based on this observation, the main argument critically engaged with Haitian literature and naive painting at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of 21st century. Indeed, his larger objectives include situating Danny Laferriere within the history of the generation of Haitian writers now living and writing abroad. It also specifies the context of emergence and development of the naïve pictorial style, the most popular figurative art in Haiti. This is a non-academic pictorial style into which Dany Laferrière seeks to inscribe his style of writing.