Vom Körper als Medium zum Medium des Textes : der Körper als narrative Strategie in Tahar Ben Jellouns L’enfant de sable

  • In works of Maghrebi authors like Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco), the body is the central medium that generates and constitutes the narration. The authors stand in the tradition of oral folk literature, which increasingly has been displaced by French written literature. Hence there is a tendency in postcolonial Maghrebi texts to reintegrate the performative act of narrating via the body into the literary structures of the novels. This becomes manifest in poly-phonic and poly-perspectival narrative experiments in which, with recourse to the halqa (the typical oral narrative situation), a re-territorialization (Deleuze/Guattari) of the body is performed. In this context the body in literature plays a central role on the level of the metadiegesis: it is presented as the medium of narration. Using as an example Tahar Ben Jellouns novel L’enfant de sable (1985), the aim of this essay is to show how halqa elements and narrative influences from The Arabian Nights structure the text, which becomes a hybrid between medium and embodiment (Fischer-Lichte) by simulating eventfulness. On the level of the diegesis, the body plays likewise a decisive role as subject of the storyline, becoming the most important medium for the expression of emotions, thoughts or attitudes. Body language is deliberately utilized by the authors to discuss ways of dealing with traditions, the negotiation of social relations and the (de-)construction of identity. Social order, power structures, hierarchies, existing values and norms are communicated and constituted via body language.

Export metadata

Additional Services

Share in Twitter Search Google Scholar
Metadaten
Author:Susanne Kaiser
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-106708
Parent Title (German):Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Philologie : Tagungsband ; 1. – 3. Juli 2010, Freie Universität Berlin, Internationale Arbeitstagung
Publisher:Friedrich Schlegel Graduiertenschule für literaturwissenschaftliche Studien
Place of publication:Berlin
Document Type:Conference Proceeding
Language:German
Date of Publication (online):2011/10/14
Date of first Publication:2011/10/13
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2011/10/14
Tag:Maghrebinische Literatur
GND Keyword:Körper <Motiv>; Körpersprache <Motiv>; Ben Jelloun, Tahar / L' enfant de sable
Page Number:15
First Page:89
Last Page:103
HeBIS-PPN:311888518
Dewey Decimal Classification:8 Literatur / 80 Literatur, Rhetorik, Literaturwissenschaft / 800 Literatur und Rhetorik
Sammlungen:Germanistik / GiNDok
CompaRe | Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
BDSL-Klassifikation:03.00.00 Literaturwissenschaft / BDSL-Klassifikation: 03.00.00 Literaturwissenschaft > 03.07.00 Ästhetik
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 3.0