Abstract EN:

This thesis seeks to study the practice of story-telling in the Americas by focussing on the Creole story-tellers who have been forgotten by history and side-tracked by intellectuals, and who, for that matter, have been absent in university studies. The personality, the social, economic and religious environment of the men and women who transmit the traditions constitute pertinent details which have hitherto been neglected. If, foolowing Jean Pouillon, we postulate that traditions are "reinventions", then we need to adress the question of their historicity, their forms of production and the agents of production : the story-tellers. During the colonial period, the story-teller took part in structuring social time and memory as a survival strategy of the community and in the spirit of subversive resistance. In spite of the coercive system imposed by the slave masters, the story-tellers succeeded in making sense of the history of the Creoles by giving expression to their philosophy and world vision. The presentation and analysis of the trajectory of a selection of story-tellers will, hopefully, reveal the form and meaning of a practice which has hitherto been surrounded by negative representations. The option of a qualitative and reflective approach will afford a different perception, not only of the men and women who are the story-tellers, but also of Creole orality and its sakes in the "French" Americas.