From History to Fabulation (history) in Contemporary African Literature Between a Romantic Tale and a Diégesis of the Diverted Life

Résumé

The narrative performed by a narrator in a novel is not a creation ex nihilo. It arises
from the close relationship between the writer and his society. Thus, to tell a story is to initiate
the narration of a significant period in the life of man, as reflected in the Stendhalian mirror
dragged along the street by the writing subject. As a witness to the history of the facts recounted,
the author uses his narrator to mediate the reader's relationship to the text. The narrated life
thus transmutes from the status of History to that of fabulation (romanced history), as part of
a dynamic process of diegetic re-creation deploying a new narrative sequence in which real life
is diverted. How does this changeover of History into a diversion of life at the heart of the society
of the text take place? Three parts underlie this reflection whose epistemological basis is
sociocriticism. Mitterand apprehends it as semiotics.