ONOMASTYQUE, HETEROGLOSSIE ET PRATIQUES DISCURSIVES DANS LE NEGRIER D’ÉDOUARD CORBIERE

Abstract

Édouard Corbière (1793-1875), a naval officer and Breton writer, occupies a marginal position in nineteenth-century French literature. In Le Négrier (1832), he breaks with the heroic and sentimental models of Sue or Hugo, choosing instead an ironic, polyphonic, and subversive form of writing. His novel is characterized by a singular use of language: maritime jargon, patois, slang, foreign accents, and literary pastiches intertwine to create a true dramaturgy of discourse. Wordplay, comic distortions, and inventive onomastics transform names and nicknames into satirical instruments, exposing the constitutive heterogeneity of language. The slave trade, which provides the historical backdrop, is not the novel’s central theme; it appears rather as the colonial framework that fuels the violence and contradictions of this world. The major innovation lies in Corbière’s destabilization of narrative codes, making language itself the site of implicit critique. Thus, Le Négrier goes beyond the maritime chronicle to become a laboratory of stylistic and discursive experimentation, foreshadowing modern reflections on plurality of voices and creolization.