ABSTRACT
This research revisits the early Francophone Algerian literature, with particular focus on Chukri Khodja's Mamoun and Eleudj: captive des barbaresques (1929), Mohamed Ould Cheikh's Myriem dans les palmes (1936) and Mohammed Dib's L'incendie (1954). Contrary to claims made by some critics like Jean Déjeux and Charles Bonn, it is assumed that there is a literary continuity between the Francophone Algerian writings of the 1920s and 1930s, and the works produced later by their successors belonging to what in critical circles are referred to as the 1952 generation, one of the best representatives of this generation being Mohammed Dib. Taking its critical paradigm from Frantz Fanon's theory of evolution of the literature of the colonized, this research argues that the above mentioned fictions follow the Fanonian tripartite literary scheme. This scheme starts with a first stage marked by the literature of assimilation, passes through a second stage called the literature of the return to the sources, and culminates in its third stage with the literature of combat. This literary evolution, it is argued with reference to the three authors mentioned above, is determined by the political evolution in colonial Algeria (1830-1962).
Keywords: Chukri Khodja, Mohamed Ould Cheikh, Mohammed Dib, Frantz Fanon, Evolution of Francophone Algeria Literature