The literatures of the Pacific Islands are many fold. They display ethnological and anthropological features which precede colonial time ; they exemplify colonial impacts, emancipation moves and independances, the cultural and litetary links and intercrossings which are to be described by referring to the mutual exchanges which the Pacific allows. From this, these literatures derive their originality. This book puts these literatures into perspective and revisits four issues which define contemporary criticism: literatures and the postcolonial, literatures and globalization, today literatures and anthropology, literature tradition and contemporaneity. Essays are in French and English.