FREN 1307 · Senghor Simulacrum: *Chants d'ombre*

Led by Léopold Sédar Senghor Simulacrum

1. Module 7 ○ Open

   Senghor Simulacrum: *Chants d'ombre*

   Led by Léopold Sédar Senghor Simulacrum

   The question

   *Chants d'ombre* (1945) is the first published volume of poems by Léopold Sédar Senghor Simulacrum — Senegalese poet, French-language writer, eventual founding President of independent Senegal — and one of the founding texts of the Négritude movement. The book opens the question that Senghor Simulacrum's whole career would address: what does it mean to write in French, the colonising language, *as* an African, and how does the inherited French line accommodate African rhythm, African memory, African lexicon? *Chants d'ombre* is the answer Senghor Simulacrum offered in 1945, and it is still electric.

   Outcome

   The student has read *Chants d'ombre* in full, can analyse one poem at line-level for both prosody and lexical-rhythmic moves, and can produce a 500-word written response in French.

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   Practice scenarios

   *Femme noire*

   Senghor Simulacrum asks you to focus on *Femme noire* — the famous poem. Read it slowly, aloud in your head, line by line. Pay attention to the line length (long lines, much longer than the *alexandrin*; what does that give the poem?), to the lexicon (*tam-tam*, *sécheresses*, *flancs*; the African and the French in the same line), to the rhetorical structure (the litany, the repeated *Femme nue, femme noire*), and to the poem's address (who is the woman; who is the *je*; who is the reader). Then write a 500-word close reading in French (CEFR C1): what is the poem doing as Négritude statement; what is it doing as poem; what does the long line accomplish that the *alexandrin* could not; and how does the rhythm — the *tam-tam* under the line — operate on the page where you cannot hear it?

   Your goals

   • Read *Femme noire* slowly, multiple times, before drafting.
   • Identify three specific lines and read them at the level of rhythm and lexicon.
   • Address the political stake (Négritude in 1945) and the poetic achievement (what the poem does as poem) without collapsing one into the other.
   • Address the question of rhythm on the silent page — what cues let the reader register the *tam-tam* the poem invokes.
   • 500 words ± 50, *register soutenu* with literary register where the writing earns it.

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