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| - | == Translator and Historian: Louise de Kéralio-Robert and English Travel Writers == | + | == Ahdaf Soueif's ''The Map of Love'': Woman (Women) exiled in an Orientalist Painting == |
| <br><br> | <br><br> | ||
| ''Abstract:''<br><br> | ''Abstract:''<br><br> | ||
| - | Louise de Kéralio-Robert (1756-1822) is assumed to have translated at | + | In ''The Map of Love'' (1999), both a family saga and a historical novel, Ahdaf Soueif, an Arab writer who publishes in English, stages three women from the same family facing bicultural and bilingual situations. Anna Winterbourne, the main character, is fascinated by an orientalist painting in a London museum. She enters this painting by deciding to live in Egypt. She thus exposes the ambivalence and limits of a representation which is doubly alien, since its author is both English and male. The individual and cultural re-centering of the female character in the Egyptian house is the basis for the re-centering of female speech and writing in a series of private |
| - | least seven works from Italian and English. This essay gives a detailed | + | and public crises (colonial power/West vs Nationalism/East…). This of |
| - | account of her many activities before focussing on her 1809 versions of ''Le voyage en Hollande et dans le Midi de l'Allemagne'' and ''L'étranger en Irlande'', both by John Carr. Kéralio-Robert's strategy of commenting on and indeed undermining the original by means of extensive notes and paratexts transforms the act of translating into a pretext for continuing to write history by other means. Thus, the «task» (Walter Benjamin) of this woman translator testifies to an unprecedented political and pedagogical project. | + | course is not without ambiguity since the novelist creates mixed |
| + | characters in a Western language. Ahdaf Soueif proposes a solution to the problem of female cultural identity by looking for deeper, more ancient and universal roots, while replacing them in a seemingly less problematic national context; she intertwines genres and narrative voices in her quest for a feminine genre that would not find its source in writing only but would seek its unity in diversity. | ||
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| - | *Publications > Volumes ''WomenWriters'' > Crossroads of Languages > <br><br> | + | *Publications > Volumes ''WomenWriters'' > Crossroads of Languages > Jondot<br><br> |
Current revision
Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love: Woman (Women) exiled in an Orientalist Painting
Abstract:
In The Map of Love (1999), both a family saga and a historical novel, Ahdaf Soueif, an Arab writer who publishes in English, stages three women from the same family facing bicultural and bilingual situations. Anna Winterbourne, the main character, is fascinated by an orientalist painting in a London museum. She enters this painting by deciding to live in Egypt. She thus exposes the ambivalence and limits of a representation which is doubly alien, since its author is both English and male. The individual and cultural re-centering of the female character in the Egyptian house is the basis for the re-centering of female speech and writing in a series of private
and public crises (colonial power/West vs Nationalism/East…). This of
course is not without ambiguity since the novelist creates mixed
characters in a Western language. Ahdaf Soueif proposes a solution to the problem of female cultural identity by looking for deeper, more ancient and universal roots, while replacing them in a seemingly less problematic national context; she intertwines genres and narrative voices in her quest for a feminine genre that would not find its source in writing only but would seek its unity in diversity.
SvD, May 2009
- Publications > Volumes WomenWriters > Crossroads of Languages > Jondot