%0 Journal Article
%T Poetics of madness as portrayed by two West African Francophone Writers
%A Russel Nsangou, Jonathan
%J Cahiers ERTA
%V 2015
%R 10.4467/23538953CE.15.006.3636
%N Numéro 7 Addictions
%P 85-105
%K Poetics, madness, non observance, social discourse, mental degeneration
%@ 2300-4681
%D 2015
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/cahiers-erta/article/poetique-de-la-folie-chez-deux-ecrivains-francophones-ouest-africains
%X The theme of madness is not really new in West African litterature. In such litterature, some crazy people have even become famous, such as Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s character in l’Aventure Ambiguë. This old topic is present in Ahmadou Kourouma’s and Ken Bugul’s writing under a new label : actually, their respective novels, Les soleils des indépendances, and La Folie et la Mort, are not only marked by an aesthetic that portrays characters suffering from kinds of madness but also by a writing style that standardizes the non-observance of standards. The discourse on madness therefore rimes with the social discourse and helps portray the situation of an African people undergoing mental degeneration.