Family Narratives and the Transmission of Heritage in Transcultural Novels
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 20, 2019
- Creator
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Sapp, Robert
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Romance Studies
- Abstract
- This dissertation examines the influence of the family on identity formation in Francophone literature. I focus on six novels by twentieth and twenty-first century authors from the Maghreb, the Middle East and Québec. The novels of Leïla Sebbar, Catherine Mavrikakis, Jacques Poulin, Abla Farhoud and Wajdi Mouawad feature the struggles of young, often immigrant, protagonists whose attempts to reconcile past and present within the family reflect on larger social themes of migration and cultural fusion in transcultural contexts. I consider the ambiguous role of the family in maintaining and propagating heritage in each. Specifically, I study the rupture of traditional means of preserving filial ties, such as a shared language and a common history, and examine the impact of this breakdown in transmission on identity formation in these texts. Taking into account sociological treatises on changing forms of the family, theories of immigrant literature and the transcultural exchange at work in
- Date of publication
- August 2013
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Fisher, Dominique D.
- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Graduation year
- 2013
- Language
- Publisher
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