Author
Al-Saab, Mahitab Salih Al-Din Muhammad Amin
Publication Place
Cairo, Egypt -
Ain Shams University, Girls College of Arts, Sciences and Education
Type
Book
Language
ara,fra
Digital
Yes
Manuscript
No
Library
Royal Danish Library
Library Asset ID
ISSN: 2356-8321, EISSN: 2356-833X
Record ID
cdi_emarefa_primary_921517
Library Location
DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals
Notes
This article presents a comparative study between the characters of the two novels: The Automobile Club of Egypt by Alaa Al Aswani and Le Tarbouche by Robert Solé. We analyze the being of the characters, that is to say we process the name, the physical portrait as well as the moral portrait, the social status, the professional career and the intellectual taste of each actor. The characters appearing in the two novels have been classified according to very divergent categories. Our article highlights the protagonists belonging to the privileged class. This class includes two essential groups: the regent class and the foreigners who enjoyed privileges during the first half of the 20th century. The regent class is made up of: kings, princes, and ministers who were in power when they appeared in both stories. It was built most of the time by a foreign majority and more precisely by Turks during the Ottoman reign. During this period Egypt was a cosmopolitan center welcoming many nationalities. Egypt being under British occupation, we are interested, in the analysis, in the English and their allies who are granted all administrative positions. On the other hand, the Syrians are among the large communities integrated into the Egyptian population of the period concerned, exceeding ten thousand. It is thanks to these Foreigners that Egypt, and especially the capital, is progressing towards the evolution of intellectual taste and progress in several areas such as: the press, commerce, industry. This ensures the modern appearance of the country through the succession of generations and the transmission of know-how from father to son. “Just as there cannot be a novel without actions, there cannot be action without characters because what is an action if not a being who acts? Without a character, there is no language, no passions, no temporality, no plausibility. No novel. »[1]. The character is a reflection of the real person, it is “the fictional representation of a person”[2] which is why the author attributes physical traits, social status, psychological depth and moral values to his characters. “A character in a novel therefore comes from a construction associating and combining the categories of being and those of doing as shown by the work of Philippe Hamon who, in the 1970s and 1980s, rehabilitated the mode of appearance of the character, and this in relation to his action and his function”. The first category is interested in “what rhetoric called the topic of the person” [3]. This notion constitutes the names of characters and the different processes used to describe them. As for the second category, it brings together the actions, "the vision of the world carried by the character and, finally, to bring to light the narrative combinations which allow, among other things, to establish a hierarchy between characters"[4] Names form a classifying sign of gender and social level. “In rhetoric, a physical description of beings, animate or not, is prosopography; as far as the romantic character is concerned, we will more readily speak of a physical portrait; a moral and psychological description is an ethopoeia, we will speak of a moral portrait”[5]. Let us add to these two portraits, metonymic descriptions: “It can be physical attributes, such as clothing or clothing accessories which have the effect of hiding but also revealing the body, both physical and social, it can also be social attributes, such as places, habitus such as foods or even moral attributes such as readings”[6]. The idea of classifying people into groups according to specific criteria has been around since human existence even before urbanization. “When we identify the actor with a role, we endow him with a social self, filled with rights and duties, character traits and norms: good or bad spouse, citizen or worker”[7]. The different social types are distinguished according to housing, clothing, leisure activities. “The characteristic of the romantic character would be on the one hand to be conditioned by a society, and on the other to become its victim”[8]. Family, coworkers or employees, and friends are clues; “the fictional status of the character rests precisely on a set of oppositions, or more generally correlations, such that no character can be studied in isolation”[9]. Language, education, food, clothing, living conditions, housework are thus very significant factors and elements. Some characters in the two novels[10] are presented in different social statuses (poor and rich) as they are subject to changes that influence their lives. Character classification will be made according to the final status of each character. In this research the social types represented in the two novels will be classified according to the following distribution: the privileged class, the middle class, the working class and the nouveau riche. [1] Michel Erman, Poetics of the novel character, Paris, Ellipses, 2006, p.10. [2] Eric Bordas et alii., Literary analysis: Notions and benchmarks, Paris, Armand Colin, 2015, p.161. [3] Michel Erman, Poetics of novel character, Op. Cit., p.30 [4] Ibidem. [5] Ibid., p.51 [6] Michel Erman, Poetics of novel character, Op. Cit., p.66. [7] Alain Touraine, Production of the company, Paris, Editions de Seuil, 1993, p.70. [8] Michel Zéraffa, Novel and society, Paris, Presses universitaire de France, 1971, p.15. [9] Henri Mitterand, Le Discourse du roman, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1980, p.59. [10] Robert Solé, Le Tarbouche, Paris, Seuil, 1992. Which we will cite under the abbreviation T. and Alaa Al Aswani, L'Automobile Club d'Espagne, translated by Gilles Gauthier, Arles: Actes Sud, 2014. The quotations mentioned in this research are taken from this French translation, under the abbreviation: A.C.
Görüntüle
Majallat al-baḥth al-ʻilmī fī al-ādāb, 2018, Vol.2018 (19), p.1-26
