La représentation des français dans le roman intitulé La Maison de lumière de Nourredine Saadi

Abstract

Imagology, which emerges as a sub-branch of comparative literature and analyses the representations of the foreigner in literary works, arouses great interest in the literary world. For this reason, many books and articles have been written both on imagology and on the imagery of a group, a society or a nation. One of the societies in question on which imagological studies are carried out is that of the French. There is no doubt that there are many imageries concerning the French, who have deeply affected various societies throughout history, and these imageries are reflected in the literary works as well. The French, who dominated Algeria between 1830-1962, left many positive and negative imageries in the collective memory of the Algerian people. In this context, the present study aims to investigate the traces and the representations of French in the novel entitled La Maison de lumière of Nourredine Saadi, who is one of the best-known writers of Francophone Algerian literature. This study further aims to examine Saadi’s representations of the French (in other words, the perception and culture of the Other) in the context of the imagological approach of Daniel-Henri Pageaux, specialist in comparative literature.