La conteuse moderne : la resistance symbolique chez Assia Djebar et Fatima Mernissi

Abstract

The art of storytelling plays an important role in many cultures, notably in the Maghreb. Long considered a woman’s duty to impart these traditional stories onto their daughters, contemporary women writers such as Assia Djebar and Fatima Mernissi have chosen instead to integrate them into their written works. This act raises two questions: what occurs when these legends are displaced from a strictly oral tradition into the predominantly masculine domain of writing, and what does it mean to re-imagine them in French, the language of the former colonizers, in post-colonial Maghreb. This study first looks at Djebar’s intertwining of several legends from Mille et une Nuits with the recounting of a young French teacher’s assassination in La femme en morceaux (1997). Secondly, it examines Mernissi’s choice to capture the traditional Moroccan folktale Qui l’emporte: la femme ou l’homme? (1983) in French instead of Arabic. The recurring themes of identity, violence, sexuality and symbolic resistance are treated. An analysis of these two oeuvres revealed the crucial presence of the resistant female, despite an often-presumed incompatibility between feminism and Islam. Additionally, it was found that storytelling remains extremely relevant in contemporary francophone women’s literature, not only as a tool of entertainment, education and preservation, but also a way by which these writers reclaim their femininity, their autonomy, and their francophonie.