What is it about?
Famous Mauritian writer Malcolm de Chazal made a hit in the 1950s Parisian literary circles with his collection of aphorisms Sens Plastique. He then experimented with other literary genres, notably theatre plays, essays and journalistic columns. While Chazal now stood away from the Continental metropolis, he applied himself to aligning his work with an alternate cultural community, as he firmly put Asia centre-stage of his reshaped world order. Why was Mauritius a hub for the recentering of Chazal's geoliterary agenda? Why did Tibet unexpectedly become a vital part of his dramatic art? This paper examines the author's playwriting in order to deal with these so far unaddressed issues and highlight their underlying paradoxes.
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Why is it important?
This paper is important because: a) there was previously no available study on Chazal's theatre work and b) the role of Tibet in Chazal's literary agenda has never been clarified so far. The most significant findings are that theatre provided the author with the means to rely on a new cultural nexus and inscribe his work within an original symbolic geographical horizon.
Perspectives
This piece is significant to my eyes, because it binds together several interests which have been especially dear to me in the last decade: in my research work, I first focused on travel literature to Tibet and then studied the ties between Western theatre and Buddhist Asia. Simultaneously, I became familiar with Mauritian literature and wrote articles on acclaimed writers Ananda Devi and Malcolm de Chazal. Thus this article brings to light unforeseen connections between seemingly separate areas of transnational literary history. Moreover, literary studies pertain here to religious studies, geopolitics and global history.
Dr Samuel Thévoz
Fondazione Robert Hollman
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Le déplacement des pôles du théâtre francophone: Malcolm de Chazal et l’arrière-scène tibétaine, Modern & Contemporary France, September 2016, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/09639489.2016.1226075.
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