From Celarié's colonial travelogue to Choukri's autobiographical novel: Glimpses into colonial Morocco.

Abstract

After the Treaty of Berlin (1884) and the division of the African continent among the European powers, Morocco was visibly under the influence of France and Spain. This influence led to the signing of the Protectorate in 1912, when Morocco underwent a socio-historical transformation that inexorably attracted the gaze of numerous Moroccan and European painters and writers. It is the development of a literary and artistic production in which the autobiographical novel of French expression and the colonial travel diary give a glimpse of all the socio-historical aspects of colonial Morocco. This article focuses on Henriette Celarié's travelogue Amours Marocaines (1927) and Mohamed Choukri's autobiographical novel Pain Nu (1973).

Henriette Celarié was a French orientalist traveler who did not hesitate to visit the less known regions of Morocco, especially the Middle Atlas, to make us discover the diversity and richness of the Amazigh civilization. On the other hand, Mohamed Choukri is a Maghrebi writer of Rifian and Amazigh origin. His literary production is marked by a pessimistic vision of the situation in colonial and post-colonial Morocco and by his struggle to reveal to the world the harsh reality of the underworld of Tangier and Tetouan. An image built far from stereotypes.

Despite of the dissimilarities between these two writers, the reading of these two works allows us to acquire a global image of the different socio-cultural aspects of the French and Spanish Protectorate of Morocco from the end of the 19th century to the second half of the 20th century.