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Viscous Circles: Antecedent Narrative Structures in Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable

Viscous Circles: Antecedent Narrative Structures in Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable VISCOUS CIRCLES: ANTECEDENT NARRATIVE STRUCTURES IN BEN JELLOUN'S L'ENFANT DE SABLE Joel Lee Coleman Tahar Ben JeUoun's companion novels L'enfant de sable (The Sand Child, 1985) and La nuit sacrée (The Sacred Night, 1987) have at times been sharply criticized because of what may be termed an orientaüst or exoticist approach to Ufe in the Maghreb. Within such readings of the novels, Western social and/or literary notions of the Islamic world supersede non-Western or postcolonial perceptions of the same subject. However, T7ie Sand Child includes a specific narrative structure which disrupts readings based on such binary oppositions; at work is a more complex mechanism, a narrative circle of amalgamation, incorporation, rupture, and regeneration. The narrative circle is one of the key elements in The Sand Child (of which The Sacred Night, the more widely known of the two novels, is a revision and continuation), and it is the vehicle through which Ben JeUoun communicates his story. Although he incorporates both Western and non-Western antecedent structures or models of the narrative circle in his text, Ben JeUoun does not subjugate one to the other; he incorporates the integrated histories and connotations of those prior literary and social structures into http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Comparatist University of North Carolina Press

Viscous Circles: Antecedent Narrative Structures in Ben Jelloun's L'Enfant de sable

The Comparatist , Volume 23 (1) – Oct 3, 1999

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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © Southern Comparative Literature Association.
ISSN
1559-0887
Publisher site
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Abstract

VISCOUS CIRCLES: ANTECEDENT NARRATIVE STRUCTURES IN BEN JELLOUN'S L'ENFANT DE SABLE Joel Lee Coleman Tahar Ben JeUoun's companion novels L'enfant de sable (The Sand Child, 1985) and La nuit sacrée (The Sacred Night, 1987) have at times been sharply criticized because of what may be termed an orientaüst or exoticist approach to Ufe in the Maghreb. Within such readings of the novels, Western social and/or literary notions of the Islamic world supersede non-Western or postcolonial perceptions of the same subject. However, T7ie Sand Child includes a specific narrative structure which disrupts readings based on such binary oppositions; at work is a more complex mechanism, a narrative circle of amalgamation, incorporation, rupture, and regeneration. The narrative circle is one of the key elements in The Sand Child (of which The Sacred Night, the more widely known of the two novels, is a revision and continuation), and it is the vehicle through which Ben JeUoun communicates his story. Although he incorporates both Western and non-Western antecedent structures or models of the narrative circle in his text, Ben JeUoun does not subjugate one to the other; he incorporates the integrated histories and connotations of those prior literary and social structures into

Journal

The ComparatistUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: Oct 3, 1999

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