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Obsession with the White Page, the Inability to Communicate, and Surface Aesthetics in the Development of Contemporary Maghrebian Fiction: The Mal de la Page Blanche in Khatibi, Farès and Meddeb

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Eric Sellin
Eric Sellin
Affiliation:
Temple University
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Extract

Writer's block is not a new concept, but I should like to consider it in a new context: the realm of the young and rapidly developing Francophone literature of the Maghreb. I am suggesting that the writer's malaise before the blank page is a sign of a highly developed authorial relationship with one's language and materials and that the recent increase in the number of (1) testimonials in which Maghrebian writers bear witness to their sense of impotence when facing the purity of the white page and (2) reactions symptomatic of that frustration is evidence of development in the literature in question.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , May 1988 , pp. 165 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

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