Tanāṣṣ al-ḥaky fī riwāyat al-ḫīmiyāˀī aw Bāwlū Kwīlū sāriq ḥulm al-ˁarab [“The Intertextuality in the novel The Alchemist or Paulo Coelho the thief of Arab’s dream”]

Abstract

“The Intertextuality in the novel The Alchemist or Paulo Coelho the thief of “Arab’s dream”. The present work deals, in its first part, with the concepts of textuality and intertextuality within the old Arabic and Western literary discourse, trying to highlight the fact that every text reflects, consciously or unconsciously, of a number of previous texts from different backgrounds. In the second part, the paper provides a textual study and analysis of the novel The Alchemist, with special attention to textual interaction between this novel and some Arab narrative traditions, as reflected in the core of the story and its symbols. We suggest that Paulo Coelho used the Arabic narrative tradition of books such as kutub al-asmār wa-l-muḥaḍarāt as a framework for his novel, with no indication of it, since there is a clear overlap between the Arabic stories voice and the Coelho’s novel voice, which means that intertextuality here is based on the principle of negation of the other voice, not the recognition of the plurality of voices.