Migrations to the North. Images of the West in Arabic Literature

  • Marianna Salvioli University of Napoli "L'Orientale"
Keywords: Arabic Travel literature, Migration, West, RachidNini, TayyibSalih

Abstract

By comparing some texts of the Arabic travel literature, this article aims to reverse the perception of the cardinal direction, West/East North/South. Travel seems to be a recurrent theme in the Arabic tradition: the ‘holy’ voyage, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which allowed mediaeval geographers to describe the lands and climates they traversed, has evolved in the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries into a study mission or a “secular” travel to the West.

The first remarkable works in modern Arabic literature are just such travel reports, mainly towards Europe. They include, in chronological order, materials such as the famous tales of al-Tahtawi and al-Shidyaq, Tayyib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, and contemporary migration literature written in Arabic as well as in other languages. It is important to observe a significant evolution of the literary genres: from the maqama and rihla by the early writers to the novel and chronicle of the more recent ones. Finally, this article shows that the West creates its own East just as the East creates its own West, thus the study of the imagery that the other develops about us is just as critical as the demystification of our representation of the other.

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Author Biography

Marianna Salvioli, University of Napoli "L'Orientale"

Marianna Salvioli completed a PhD in linguistics and comparative literature at SESA (Scuola Europea di Studi Avanzati), at SUM (Istituto di Scienze Umane) of Naples and in “Langues, cultures et sociétés” at INALCO (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales) in Paris. After her PhD in joint-supervision, she continued her research as a graduate fellow of the French Embassy in Morocco and taught at the Italian Institute of Culture in Rabat. She has also taught comparative literature at the University Orientale of Naples and French at the University Federico II of Naples. Her interests include Arabic, French, and American literature, with special attention to literary translation, the phenomena of plurilinguism and interculturality. She has authored several essays and the book Voci da Tangeri. Identità, cultura e letteratura in Marocco (Diabasis, 2010). She translated Maram al-Masri’s collection of poetry, Ti guardo (Multimedia Edizioni, 2009), from Arabic to Italian.

References

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Published
2011-11-20
How to Cite
Salvioli, M. (2011). Migrations to the North. Images of the West in Arabic Literature. Between, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/276