Front Cover Iconography and Algerian Women’s Writing
Regular price
€102.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Pamela A. Pears
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Algerian women
Author_Pamela A. Pears
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSB
Category=JBSF1
Category=JFSJ1
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
francophone literature
gender studies
Language_English
Meghreb
Meghrebian writing
PA=Available
paratextual studies
postcolonial writing
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
softlaunch
women's studies
Product details
- ISBN 9780739198360
- Weight: 417g
- Dimensions: 157 x 240mm
- Publication Date: 29 Oct 2015
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The front covers of books written by Algerian women serve as the primary source of investigation in Front Cover Iconography and Algerian Women Writers. These covers have implications that extend beyond selling the book. What we see on one side of the page—or in this case, the cover, (recto) controls what we read on the reverse—in this case, the text itself (verso). Using theories of the paratext, including those of Gérard Genette and Jonathan Gray, this book determines how four dominant iconographies used on the covers of Algerian women’s writing – Orientalist art, the veil, the desert, and the author portrait – work with and against the texts they represent. These images have an impact on the initial reception of the book, but beyond that, book covers determine how both the informed and uninformed reader categorize and interpret francophone Algerian women’s writing in France and beyond. As the covers help to sell the works, they also produce messages, represented via their iconographies that embed themselves into the texts. A sometimes explicit, and at the very least, implicit dialog between the visual paratextual representation and the written textual one is created: a dialog that extends beyond the life of the physical book to a sort of canonical paradigm for reading these authors’ works. Thus, even if the cover image appears ephemeral, it never truly disappears. Its powerful control over critical reception and, ultimately, interpretation of francophone Algerian women’s writing remains.
Pamela Pears is associate professor of French at Washington College.
