African tradition pays particular attention to dreams, their interpretation and their predictive power. Such attention is also found in African novels. This work seeks to show the importance of the dream in the novel, its influence within, its oral specificity and its contribution to African and Caribbean literatures.

Through select novels, Isabelle Constant studies the recurrent themes in dreams. Both realistic and allegoric components are often present. Thus the purpose of this essay is not to distinguish between realism and allegory, as done by the ancient Greek Artemidorus, but to relate the dream themes to the socio-economic structures, the life of the characters, their desires and their spirituality.

Isabelle Constant teaches French, African, and Caribbean literatures at the University of the West Indies, Cave-Hill campus, in Barbados. She has published a book on the language of utopia in Christiane Rochefort’s novels, articles on Paludes by André Gide, and numerous articles on francophone literatures.

Isabelle Constant is the recipient of a Ph.D. (1994) from the Department of French and Italian at the University of Arizona.