From Majnun Layla to Le fou d'Elsa: a study in intertextuality and literary space.

The article treats intertextuality in Aragon's lyrical poem Le fou d'Elsa written in 1963, and justly considered as one of the great masterpieces of lyrical writing of all times. The poet tackles in his 450-page poem the fall of the Andalusian city of Granada after a long siege. His moving and powerful verse translates the sufferings and humiliation that the people of the city experienced when the Spanish conquistadors forced the Muslims to embrace Catholicism, or exiled them to North Africa. The article seeks to explore and apprehend how Aragon recycles his wide knowledge of Andalusia, and how he creates new and unique poetical patterns out of his vast ocean of readings. Intertextual correspondences are explored on five axes: history, Islam, madness, Sufism and love. The article demonstrates that Aragon's immense knowledge of Andalusia generates "an innovative literary space" that opposes the narrow concept of place as based on a known locale. The space that Aragon formulates is thus an intersection of exiles and experiences, a knot of present, past, and future, an apex of conjugations where poetry flows. Thus intertextual references, particularly the legendary Arabian figure of Majnun Layla, reveal themselves in the Aragonian text as the source of poetical creativity par excellence, in a unique encounter and fusion of civilizations.

Amira El-Zein received her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in Washington D.C. where she currently teaches courses in Arabic and Comparative Literature, both medieval and modern. She published two anthologies of poetry and translated several French literary works into Arabic. She has two forthcoming books: The Seen and the Unseen: Jinn Among Humankind, and On Sufism.