Indian Ocean literature

The

globalisation. Combining Indian and Chinese literatures, among the oldest on the planet, this can be characterized as the most fictionalized ocean, having been the backbone of many tales, novels and poetic work.^[1]^[2]

This was further enhanced when

Camoens

then wrote his famous Luciads.

Bernardin de Saint Pierre, who invented the naturalist novel with Paul et Virginie, an idyllic and tragic novel under the tropics, in Mauritius. Charles Baudelaire also carried his spleen there, experimenting the correspondences and falling in love with Creole and Indian ladies, as expressed in his poems "La dame créole" and "A une malabaraise". In Réunion

, Rouget Leconte de Lisle is foremost, with symbolist poetry.

Many more poets went to the

Mascarene islands, like Paul-Jean Toulet

.

Colonial era

In the colonial era, writers like

Rabearivelo took French to new horizons, combining their original languages and cultures with the colonists' idiom. In Réunion, Marius and Ary Leblond developed the colonial novel, and in Mauritius, Clément Charoux and Léoville L'Homme

expressed the contradictions of cultures and colours in a colonial environment.

Preceding the independence period, Mauritian writers like

Edouard Maunick, Robert Edward-Hart, René Noyau and Emmanuel Juste espoused négritude

or more Mauritian themes.