Time Signatures: Contextualizing Contemporary Francophone Autobiographical Writing from the Maghreb (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780739112908)

Time Signatures engages in a close study of the autobiographical writings of three contemporary Francophone writers from the Maghreb: Assia Djebar, Hélène Cixous, and Abdelkébir 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.

Author: Alison Rice
ISBN-10: 0739112902
ISBN-13: 9780739112908
Publisher: Lexington Books
Language: English
Published: 03/21/2006
Pages: 358
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.01h x 6.11w x 1.03d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2006 pg. 300