Images et narration dans l’œuvre de Dany Laferrière

Abstract

Narrative developments often stem from images in Dany Laferrière’s work. On the other hand, some of the narration in Laferrière’s fiction and nonfiction is synthesized in narrative snapshots that resemble descriptions. Temporal dimension plays a key role in this constant shift between image and imagination, because, as Didi-Huberman has shown, images carry an anachronistic element. This element also allows Laferrière and his narrators to use mainly simple present tense, even when the content of the narration is set in the past. Nevertheless, images are never explained or rationalized in Laferrière’s work, which keeps the mystery and ambiguity that characterize visual representations.