Debra Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853236597
- eISBN:
- 9781846312625
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846312625
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book offers an in-depth study of the autobiographical writings of four twentieth-century writers from North Africa — Assia Djebar, Mouloud Feraoun, Abdelkébir Khatibi and Albert Memmi — as they ...
More
This book offers an in-depth study of the autobiographical writings of four twentieth-century writers from North Africa — Assia Djebar, Mouloud Feraoun, Abdelkébir Khatibi and Albert Memmi — as they explore issues of language, identity and the individual's relationship to history. The book places these writers in a clearly defined theoretical context, introducing and contextualising each of the four through the application of postcolonial studies and literary theory on autobiography linked to close textual reading of their works. Avoiding both psychoanalytical theory and approaches concerned primarily with the writer's ‘testimony value’, the book concentrates instead on the poetic and literary qualities of each author's work, dwelling on the politics and poetics of identity, as well as the ethics and aesthetics of this literature. It includes clear discussions of key terms such as ‘postcolonial’, ‘Francophone’ and ‘autobiography’, which current academic discourse has rendered very complex and even opaque. The book includes a fascinating photograph of two stone tablets inscribed with Punic and Numidian scripts.Less
This book offers an in-depth study of the autobiographical writings of four twentieth-century writers from North Africa — Assia Djebar, Mouloud Feraoun, Abdelkébir Khatibi and Albert Memmi — as they explore issues of language, identity and the individual's relationship to history. The book places these writers in a clearly defined theoretical context, introducing and contextualising each of the four through the application of postcolonial studies and literary theory on autobiography linked to close textual reading of their works. Avoiding both psychoanalytical theory and approaches concerned primarily with the writer's ‘testimony value’, the book concentrates instead on the poetic and literary qualities of each author's work, dwelling on the politics and poetics of identity, as well as the ethics and aesthetics of this literature. It includes clear discussions of key terms such as ‘postcolonial’, ‘Francophone’ and ‘autobiography’, which current academic discourse has rendered very complex and even opaque. The book includes a fascinating photograph of two stone tablets inscribed with Punic and Numidian scripts.
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853236597
- eISBN:
- 9781846312625
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853236597.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the question of the relationship between the writer's self and literary expression. The analysis focuses on the work of four ...
More
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the question of the relationship between the writer's self and literary expression. The analysis focuses on the work of four North African writers: Mouloud Feraoun, Assia Djebar, Albert Memmi and Abdelkébir Khatibi. The writers share a complex relationship with language, since all of them write in French, a legacy of colonial intervention in those countries, but this relationship varies according to differences in ethnic identity, class and gender. The structure and organization of the present study are also described.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the question of the relationship between the writer's self and literary expression. The analysis focuses on the work of four North African writers: Mouloud Feraoun, Assia Djebar, Albert Memmi and Abdelkébir Khatibi. The writers share a complex relationship with language, since all of them write in French, a legacy of colonial intervention in those countries, but this relationship varies according to differences in ethnic identity, class and gender. The structure and organization of the present study are also described.
