La représentation de l’Occident dans la littérature marocaine de voyage. De Fī ’l-ṭufūlah aux migrations contemporaines
(The representation of the West in Moroccan travel literature. From Fī ’l-ṭufūlah to contemporary migrations)
in La rivista di Arablit, a. III, n. 5, giugno 2013, pp. 51-66.
Analyzing the representation of the West in Moroccan travel literature, this study aims at reversing the perception of the West-East or North-South cardinal direction. Moreover, by including novels written both in Arabic and French in a comparative perspective, this article goes beyond strict divisions in Moroccan bilingual or, better said, multilingual literature, which is here considered as a whole. The study will start from ‘Abd al-Maǧīd ibn Ǧallūn’s Fī ’l-ṭufūlah (1957), which represents an interesting inversion of the East-West relationship, since the hero is a child of Moroccan origins, but grown up in Manchester until the age of eight; and it continues analyzing novels such as ‘Abdallāh al-‘Arwī’s al-Ġurbah (1971) and illegal migrants’ chronicles, Muṣṭafā Ša‘bān’s Amwāǧ al-rūḥ (1998) and Rašīd Nīnī’s Yawmiyyāt muhāǧir sirrī (1999). Arabic works will be analyzed next to French novels, such as Driss Chraïbi’s Les Boucs (1955), Leïla Houari’s Zeida de nulle part (1985) and Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Partir (2006).
