La musique à l'ouvrage dans l'oeuvre d'Assia Djebar [Ressource électronique] : force architecturale et métaphorisation / Cécile Kyriakos

Ph. D. : French : University of Colorado : 2009

Bibliogr. p. 210-214

While Francophone North-African literature and more specifically the work of Assia Djebar have been studied in depth both internationally and nationally (i.e. France) as falling into the definition of Post-colonial studies, my work will focus on the use of music as a technique of writing and as a metaphorical structure for the entire piece of work of Assia Djebar's texts and two films. Assia Djebar is an important figure in the Algerian and International literary world for two reasons. She arose as a young writer while the Algerian war against France was still taking place (1954-1962) and she is one of the first few Algerian women to have published novels in French. She is the result of the French educative system at a time of colonization while remaining faithful to her culture and she is thus a figure of great importance in the context of Post-colonial studies as well as women studies. While my project inscribes itself firmly in the field of post-colonial studies - interrogating such central concept as the relationship of Assia Djebar's work with the colonial History of her country, the erased memory of women and the use of French language as a mean of self-expression - it also adds a new perspective to the field by exploring the central cultural concept of "orality" through the apparently more traditional notion of music. My work demonstrates through a close analysis of her texts and films that Assia Djebar has developed a unique style of expression based upon a personal aesthetic metaphor: that of music. By iv studying the use of music as a technique of writing and as the metaphorical structure of Assia Djebar's texts, my work explores the cultural dimension of music into an Arab-Muslim culture. It also shows how music is related to the voice and orality in that culture and explores the relationship between orality and the community of women. This critical relationship which I introduce and explore between music and orality adds a new understanding to a conception of orality that is sometimes simplified. It also fills a gap in Assia Djebar's criticism since no critic has yet noticed and commented on the singular importance of music in her entire work.