Time Signatures: Contextualizing Contemporary Francophone Autobiographical Writing from the Maghreb

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Time Signatures engages in a close study of the autobiographical writings of three contemporary Francophone writers from the Maghreb: Assia Djebar, Hlne Cixous, and Abdelkbir Khatibi. Alluding to music not only as a "theme" pulsing throughout these writers' works, but also as a means of comprehending their unique, improvisational writing styles, Alison Rice offers readers a new and beautifully constructed way of reading these authors' texts by demonstrating that the form adopted to address topics of concern is as significant as the content itself. The voice of Jacques Derrida intermingles with the timbres of these three writers in fruitful contrapuntal passages, serving as a source of inspiration for conceptualizing language and communicating the self in an unprecedented manner. Time Signatures demonstrates that these individuals write the "self" in French in ways influenced by sensitivities acquired during their early experiences in a multicultural, multilingual "colonial" environment in which their ears were trained, and their minds tuned, for translations to come.

Reviews

Alison Rice's Time Signatures is an original, well-researched and strongly argued work on the structural relationship between Francophone autobiographical writings and music. It constitutes a significant contribution to Francophone Studies and opens a new direction in the field. -- Hafid Gafati, Texas Tech University

Author Bio

Alison Rice is Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University for Notre Dame.