Myths in African Literature: the Case of Kateb Yacine and Nuruddin Farah

Soussa, Chafia; Maoui, Hocine

مجلة النص
Volume 13, Numéro 1, Pages 638-648
2026-06-06

Myths In African Literature: The Case Of Kateb Yacine And Nuruddin Farah

Authors : Soussa Chafia . Maoui Hocine .

Abstract

In most world cultures, literature, like the other arts, has long taken from myths as a fruitful resource of inspiration. Hence, the arts insured the survival of myths, the latter being coated with literary texts. The present paper discusses the way myths moved away from the sacred to the profane and thus became introduced into literature. First, the paper will focus on the contribution of Pierre Brunel and his interest with the “literary myth” and namely the relationship that exists between the anthropological myth and the literary myth. This paper analyzes the mythical space that marks the African literary field; essentially in the texts of the Algerian writer Kateb Yacine and the Somali one Nuruddin Farah and try to look, in particular, at the manifestation of this transformation of myths from the sacred to the profane in the texts of the aforementioned authors.