Date of Award

5-1-2024

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of English

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Eric Keenaghan

Committee Members

Helen Elam, Michael Leong

Keywords

(post)colonial literature, Algerian literature, Francophone literature, poetics, poetry, translation

Subject Categories

English Language and Literature

Abstract

Algerian Poetry without Borders: Jean Sénac, Assia Djebar & Mohammed Dib in Translation is a hybrid project that combines literary translation with (post)colonial and translation theories to illuminate the importance of the poetry of three major 20th century Algerian writers: pied-noir poet Jean Sénac (1926-1973), Amazigh poet Assia Djebar (1936-2015), and Arabic poet Mohammed Dib (1920-2003). Algerian Poetry without Borders includes selections from three previously untranslated poetry collections—one from each poet discussed—presenting them alongside critical essays that trace each writer’s individual contributions to (post)colonial Maghrebian poetry and (post)colonial thinking. This dissertation examines the ways in which embodied language and embodied poetry might be better able to translate individual, disparate (post)colonial experiences into expression. Algerian Poetry without Borders traces the three poets’ liberatory poetics focusing on their disruption and reclamation of the French colonial language. I argue that the Algerian (post)colonial condition of identity defined by difference can serve as a lens through which others might understand their own positions in a (post)colonial, globalized world. Moreover, I argue that this condition represents a new way to approach literary translation which, when rooted in the celebration of difference and of its own necessary failure, may also perform in an anticolonial liberatory fashion.

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