Créolité is a literary movement first developed in the 1980s by Martinican

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

 writers Patrick Chamoiseau

Patrick Chamoiseau

Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the créolité movement.-Biography:Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Édouard Glissant to...

, Jean Bernabé

Jean Bernabé

Jean Bernabé is a writer and linguist.Bernabé is a professor of language and culture at the Université Antilles-Guyane...

 and Raphaël Confiant

Raphaël Confiant

Raphaël Confiant is a Martinican writer known for his literary commitment towards Creole literature.-Biography:Raphaël Confiant was born in 1951 in Le Lorrain, Martinique. He studied English and Political Science at the University of Aix-Marseille...

. The trio published Eloge de la créolité (In Praise of Creoleness) in 1989 as a response to the perceived inadequacies of the négritude

Négritude

Négritude is a literary and ideological movement, developed by francophone black intellectuals, writers, and politiciansin France in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan Léon Damas.The Négritude...

 movement. Créolité, or "creoleness", is a neologism which attempts to describe the cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of the Antilles

Antilles

The Antilles islands form the greater part of the West Indies in the Caribbean Sea. The Antilles are divided into two major groups: the "Greater Antilles" to the north and west, including the larger islands of Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola , and Puerto Rico; and the smaller "Lesser Antilles" on the...

, and more specifically of the French Caribbean

French Caribbean

The term French Caribbean varies in meaning with its usage and frame of reference. This ambiguity makes it very different from the term French West Indies, which refers to the specific, formal French possessions in the Caribbean region...

.

Creoleness may also refer to the scientifically meaningful characteristics of creole language

Creole language

A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...

s, the subject of study in creolistics

Creolistics

Creolistics, or Creology, is the scientific study of creole languages and, as such, is a subfield of linguistics. Someone who engages in this study is called a creolist.-Controversy:...

.
Créolité can perhaps best be described in contrast with the movement that preceded it, la négritude, a literary movement spearheaded by Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire

Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...

, Léopold Sédar Senghor

Léopold Sédar Senghor

Léopold Sédar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal . Senghor was the first African elected as a member of the Académie française. Before independence, he founded the political party called the Senegalese...

 and Léon Damas

Léon Damas

Léon-Gontran Damas was a French poet and politician. He was one of the founders of the Négritude movement.-Biography:...

 in the 1930s.