This thesis considers prose texts by the Austrian authors Marlene Streeruwitz and Lilian Faschinger from the viewpoint of intertextuality. The research does not rely on the narrow definitions of intertextuality which are concerned with the appearance of an anterior text in a later text, or on studies of source and influence. Rather my treatment of the novels considers the way meanings are constructed by a network of cultural and social discourses which embody distinct codes, expectations and assumptions. This study discusses the ways in which the chosen texts, through their intertexts, display a postmodern impetus towards reappropriating authorized discourse in new and challenging ways, from feminist perspectives.
My intertextual readings are alert to two main threads – the critique of aspects of Austrian society evident in the novels of Streeruwitz and Faschinger and their place within the tradition of Osterreich-Beschimpfung, and the interventions into issues pertaining to gender. I examine thematic similarities and differences in the texts, which draw attention to specifically Austrian or gender related issues, as well as scrutinizing formal and linguistic elements. Ultimately, my thesis poses and suggests answers to questions regarding strategies of intervention by feminist authors and the fruitfulness of intertextual readings.

Intertextual interventions in the novels of Marlene Streeruwitz and Lilian Faschinger

Diana Abu-Jaber's 2003 novel, Crescent, examines the complex position of Arabs and Arab Americans living in the United States with respect to notions of identity by creating a complex hybrid text. Crescent offers characters who face different forms of exile and have to work through fractured, destabilized identities to create for themselves new identities that account for and embrace their hyphenated, hybrid positions. The novel does so using a narrative that creatively combines what initially looks like a rather conventional version of the Western born novel form with a storytelling form deriving from the infamous The Thousand and One Nights, often referred to as the Arabian Nights and historically associated with the East.

Arabian Nights in America: Hybrid Form and Identity in Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent

espanolA traves de este articulo la figura de Kathy H., protagonista de Never Let Me Go de Kazuo Ishiguro, sera presentada como una replica de Sherezade, adaptando la idea del cuentacuentos a su contexto poscolonial y distopico en una narracion que explora las diversas funciones de nuestras narrativas cotidianas. Estas sirven para crear un sentido de identidad individual y colectiva, construyendo y modelando nuestro pasado, nuestros suenos y esperanzas; permitiendonos recuperar todo lo perdido y, especialmente, comunicar nuestras experiencias y sobrevivir en la memoria de otros. EnglishThroughout this article the figure of Kathy H., protagonist of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, is going to be presented as a replication of Scheherazade, adapting the trope of the storyteller to her dystopian and postcolonial context in a narration that explores the diverse roles of narratives in our lives. They serve to create a sense of individual and communal identity; constructing and shaping our past, our dreams and hopes; enabling us to recover all that we have lost and, especially, to communicate our experiences and survive in the memories of others.

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Un-Belonging and Death Vanished by Storytelling: Ishiguro’s Kathy H. As a Dystopian Scheherazade

Le prologue-cadre des Mille et une nuits et le thème du Svayamvara : contribution à l'histoire des contes indiens

With tales that date as far back as the ninth century, One Thousand Nights and a Night is one of the earliest seminal texts to first expose the West to Eastern life and culture. Following their translation, their extensive influence upon eighteenth century French and British travel literature and nineteenth century European and American literature, became an established fact. However, this has hardly been the case among the Arab literary tradition, where the tales have been initially neglected in both their oral and written forms. This paper traces the reception and impact of The Nights on European narrative, poetic, and dramatic productions even before transaltion to highlight its significance as a cultural median and, in the process, elaborates upon its Arab neglect. Such an exposition serves to subvert the claim that the texts translation was an act of exploitation by the west. Indeed, its early impact upon the literature and imagination of the West indicates a reception that precedes and runs parallel to the West's material and politically oriented imperial influence.

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A Cultural Median: One Thousand Nights and a Night before 1700

Setting out to investigate the frame-story of the Nights and its impact on Eastern and Western literature, I was unaware of the wealth of studies that have been published. They range from strictly philological research to postmodern literary studies. The former often include considerable reservations about the latter and their seemingly inflated interpretations of details. For this reason, I have largely restricted myself to reconsidering previous theses and theories and will regroup different approaches as to content, form, or both while focusing on Shahrazâds different roles as "heroine," "narrator," and "woman." Introduction "Your name's really Sherazade?" "Yes." "Really? It's . . . it's so . . . How can I put it? You know who Sheherazade was?" "Yes." "And that doesn't mean anything to you?" "No." "You think you can be called Sherazade, just like that? . . ." "No idea." He looked at her, standing the other side of the high, round counter at the fast-food, unable to believe his eyes. "And why not Aziyade?" "Who's that?" "A beautiful Turkish woman from Istanbul who Pierre Loti was in love with, a hundred years ago." "Pierre Loti I've heard of. Not Aziyade." ". . . Aziyade belonged to the harem of an old Turk. She was a young Circassian slave, converted to Islam." "Why you telling me about this woman? She's got nothing to do with me." "She had green eyes, like you." "That's no reason." Sherazade was drinking her Coke out of the can. She wasn't listening any more. Julien Desrosiers went back to reading the small ads in Liberation. (Sebbar 1-2) Shahrazâd seems to be common property for Arabs and Europeans, natives and migrants, the educated and the uneducated alike. Beyond the diffusion of Shahrazâd's own story and the repertoire of her stories into many cultures, there is also evidence for their origins in many cultures. The collection known as Thousand and One Nights is the result of a "cultural and ethnic meltingprocess" (Walther 12), in which Indian and Persian elements blend (not to mention Greek, Egyptian, and Turkish). Against this multinational backdrop, the principle of intertwined stories corresponds to Arab concepts of adab by underlining the power of the word and of brilliant speech. Shahrazâd herself is a cultural amalgamate, for she speaks the Arabic language, bears a Persian name (meaning "of noble appearance and/or origin"), and employs an Indian narrative mode, the frame-story device. Moreover, it has repeatedly been pointed out that, long before Galland's French translation of the Nights started its triumphant march through the Western world, its forerunners had already stimulated European and Judeo-Christian culture. The Sindbâd-cycle has been compared to Homer's Odyssey, and Shahrazâd has been considered-and refuted-to be a sister of the biblical Esther (De Goeje; Cosquin), while the opening story of the two kings Shariyâr and Shâhzamân has been believed a variation of paradise lost and regained (Ghazoul 18). Whatever common grounds the Nights and the foundation myths of Judeo-Christian culture may have, there is no doubt that before they were even translated into French, English, and German, the Nights made their mark on European literature, in particular on the literature of Renaissance Italy (Walther 17; Littmann 359). In Europe and America as well as in the Near East, writers in the twentieth century (in fact more so than ever) still used the characters of Shahrazâd's tales and her narrative mode as models for their own writings. With this in mind, Fedwa Malti-Douglas states: "Were the Arabic Shahrazad to awaken, like some fairy tale princess, centuries after she first wove the stories in The Thousand and One Nights, she would undoubtedly be surprised by her numerous literary transformations" ("Shahrazad Feminist" 40). Robert Irwin states that it is probably easier to specify the few Western or non-Arab authors who were not affected by the Nights (Irwin 358; Pinault 65-66) than to present a comprehensive list of those who were-this list ranging from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir Walter Scott, and William Thackeray through Gustave Flaubert, Stendhal, and Gerard de Nerval to H. …

Susanne Enderwitz

Papers

Shahrazad is One of Us: Practical Narrative, Theoretical Discussion, and Feminist Discourse