Pourquoi Ébauche du père de Jean&#8239Sénac ne peut-il être qu’un roman ébauché ?

Abstract

Written between February 1959 and October 1962, the autobiographical novel Sketch of the Father (Ébauche du père) by Algerian poet Jean Sénac (1926-1973) remained unfinished and was never published during the author’s lifetime —even though it preoccupied the poet throughout his stay in Paris (1954-1962) and following his return to Algeria in 1962. This essay focuses on some of the deeper elements of novel —its objectives, its structure, its inherent instability— as witnessed in the original manuscript from the Sénac archives of National Library of Algiers, and explores the unfinished nature of a “perpetual” novel.

Keywords

• genetic criticism
• Jean Sénac
• autobiographical novel
• maghrebian literature
• incomplete wotks
• unfinished works