Paradise lost?: narratives of disaster in the French Caribbean

Yet the archipelago is also an area especially prone to floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, and has been profoundly imprinted by the catastrophic effects of colonialism. Disaster Studies is a recent area of academic interest in Francophone Postcolonial Studies and in the last decade Haiti has received significant critical attention, because of the devastating earthquake that shook Port-au-Prince on 12th January 2010.

Although the French départements of Martinique and Guadeloupe have also experienced—or been profoundly threatened by— countless so-called ‘natural’ disasters, these islands have largely been elided in Caribbean Disaster Studies. <br><br>This thesis complements and expands on existing works by examining literary works written in response to, or in remembrance of, three major ‘natural’ disasters or moments of crises in twentieth-century Martinique and Guadeloupe: The Eruption of Mount Pelée in 1902, the worst volcanic disaster of the twentieth century which killed 30,000 people in Saint Pierre in three minutes; the anticipated eruption of La Soufrière in 1976, which led to the evacuation of 75,000 people from the Basse-Terre area; and Cyclone Hugo in 1989, which devastated Guadeloupe and gained notoriety as the cyclone of the century. <br><br>The study puts well-established writers including Raphaël Confiant, Suzanne Dracius, Daniel Maximin and Gisèle Pineau into dialogue with lesser-known or entirely forgotten authors such as Clémence Cassius de Linval, Raphaël Tardon, Guy Tirolien and Daniel Picouly.