Littérature des Français du Maghreb et métissage linguistique

Abstract

The literary work of Jean Pélégri and Jean-Pierre Koffel presents two different ways of rendering the richness of linguistic mixing in colonial and post-colonial Maghreb. For both of them, it is a question of making the various communities living in the area talk by building a bridge that seems to have its origin in the Mediterranean poetics of the École d’Alger, but which tends to integrate into a profoundly Maghreb literature. Both use a French language marked by the different languages that characterise the Maghreb. However, in Pélégri this attempt originates from the need to respond to the drama of the war and the separation from Algerian territory ; in Koffel it starts from the need to respect the codes of the police, making the everyday life and the familiarity of the Moroccan and French speakers of Morocco, but opening up to a linguistic analysis that crosses the lines of the text, almost wanting to mix didactic motivations and meta-textual play.

Keywords

• Colonial literature. Koffel. Maghreb. Pélégri. École d’Alger