La vengeance chez Frédéric Marcelin et Sony Labou Tansi : La vengeance de Mama (1902, 1974) et La Vie et demie (1979)

Nearly 70 years apart, two francophone authors, the Haitian Frédéric Marcelin (1848-1917) and Congolese Sony Labou Tansi (1947-1995), published novels whose plot either entirely or partially calls upon theme of vengeance, each featuring same principal elements: women, dictators, champagne, poison, seduction sex. In Marcelin’s La vengeance de Mama (1902, 1974), Zulma Corneille, nicknamed Mama, avenges death her fiancé, Épaminondas Labasterre, by making his murderer Télémaque drink poisoned champagne during an amourous rendez-vous; in Tansi’s Vie et demie (1979), after seeing entire family murdered Guide Providientiel la Katamalanasie, Chaïdana, daughter antagonist Martial, likewise uses to kill off a number totalitarian country’s officials having offered herself them novel’s eponymous hotel. The goal this article is investigate what must be fortuitous similarities between these novels, as it unlikely that would have read Marcelin. It aims analyse way which employed notably use ruses means enticing victims.