Journal Article

الرواية الموريتانية وازدواجية الأصل: قراءة للثابت والمتحول من النص

إبراهيم, محمد الأمين ولد مولاي

2000

Overview

“The general aim of this study is an attempt to define the Mauritanian novel that is written in both French and Arabic by the same author. An example of this is the Mauritanian novelist, Moussa Ould Ebnou who wrote his novels in French first and then in Arabic. The significance of this dualistic writing is stylistic. It poses problems related to creative writing and its options, the relationship of idioms to subject matter, the formulations that shape its message, and the levels of its linguistic arrangement. The Arabic text of the novel bases its textual dependence on the novel written in French because it precedes it in writing and in the shaping of the message. As a result, the Arabic novel remains on the horizons of the first novel, by virtue of its story and the formulation of its message. This is what is called the ““invariable”” in the text, by virtue of its presence in both the Frech and the Arabic texts. But at the same time, the text is somewhat independent from the French text. This is because the writer is the author and is not merely a translator bound by the letter of the original. As a result, he produces a novel different from the previous one in the language in which it was written. What distinguishes this language is its stylistic specificity linked to the poetics of Arabic. This is what is called the ““variable”” in the text. The article applies the method of close reading to trace the variable and the invariable in the text. The article applies a close reading of Moussa Ould Ebnou’s novel, L’amour impossible (Impossible Love), published in French in 1995 and in Arabic in 1999, to establish the variable and invariable dimension of the text.”

• Publisher: Brill