in La rivista di Arablit, a. X, n. 20, dicembre 2020, pp. 11-30.

After several centuries of commercial contacts with the emirs of Mauritania, France decided to occupy the territory at the end of the nineteenth century and carried out its plan in 1902. From this date, the population started not only an armed resistance, but also a cultural battle. One of the aspects of cultural resistance was a literary defiance that used primarily, but not exclusively, the dialectal literary genre called lə-ġna. Some Mauritanian poets used this genre to denounce colonialism and the acculturation it sought to bring about in the country. This article aims to provide an overview of the situation in Mauritania during the colonial period, along with the main characteristics of Ḥassāniyyah poetry, lə-ġna, and a sample of resistance poems.