In this Book
- Native Tongue, Stranger Talk: The Arabic and French Literary Landscapes of Lebanon
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: Syracuse University Press
- Series: Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms
Can a reality lived in Arabic be expressed in French? Can a French-language
literary work speak Arabic? In Native Tongue, Stranger Talk Hartman
shows how Lebanese women authors use spoken Arabic to disrupt literary
French, with sometimes surprising results. Challenging the common claim
that these writers express a Francophile or "colonized" consciousness, this
book demonstrates how Lebanese women writers actively question the political
and cultural meaning of writing in French in Lebanon. Hartman argues
that their innovative language inscribes messages about society into their
novels by disrupting class-status hierarchies, narrow ethno-religious identities,
and rigid gender roles. Because the languages of these texts reflect the
crucial issues of their times, Native Tongue, Stranger Talk guides the reader
through three key periods of Lebanese history: the French Mandate and
Early Independence, the Civil War, and the postwar period. Three novels
are discussed in each time period, exposing the contours of how the authors
"write Arabic in French" to invent new literary languages.
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xv-xx
- Introduction
- pp. 1-34
- Part One. Gendered Interderence
- 1. Gendered Interference
- pp. 37-56
- 2. Jamil and Salma
- pp. 57-81
- 3. "May You Bury Me"
- pp. 82-104
- Part Two. Arabic as Feminst Punctuation
- 6. Like Soap Bubbles on Our Tongue
- pp. 150-172
- 7. Lebanon Is Tomorrow's Sun
- pp. 173-196
- 8. Can a French Novel Speak Arabic
- pp. 197-222
- Part Three. Writing as Translation
- 9. Writing as Translation
- pp. 225-241
- 10. A Francophone Druze Novel?
- pp. 242-265
- 11. The Tightening Corset of French
- pp. 266-286
- 12. The Arabic Language Leaked into It
- pp. 287-310
- Conclusion
- pp. 311-320
- Bibliography
- pp. 321-344