The mythopoetics of debt: exploring the works of Ismail Kadare

Thesis

This thesis examines the novels of the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare. It studies four novels: Les Tambours de la pluie [Kështjella], Qui a ramené Doruntine ? [Kush e solli Doruntinën], Le Général de l’armée morte [Gjenerali i ushtrisë së vdekur], and Le Palais des rêves [Pallati i Ëndrrave]. The methodological angle of this thesis is two-fold. It investigates the formal devices of repetition, circularity and intertextuality in these texts, but it does so with the aim of exploring one central thematic complex: the idea of Albanian identity as it is imagined and refracted through a variety of perspectives in the novels. This dual methodological perspective―textual and thematic―also means that the aim of this thesis is two-fold. It makes a contribution to scholarship on Kadare by demonstrating a formal and thematic coherence within some of his major works. It also makes a contribution to a wider context of critical and scholarly discourse on the Balkans. First, the intervention I make in this field is characterised by the decision to follow Kadare in his predominantly national, rather than a more broadly regional, perspective. In his works, this national perspective is self-reflexive. As his novels show in their rewriting of historical events and salient elements of folk morality, a reflection upon national identity is part of the national identity of Albania.

Second, and in continuity with this emphasis on self-reflexivity, the perspective that this thesis presents on cultural themes is always textual: it examines how themes are embedded in stories and how they become reinterpreted by narrative. Across this corpus of texts, and from the perspective of a movement from history to modernist abstraction, this thesis shows a fundamental continuity in Kadare’s artistic concern with questioning Albanian identity.

Authors: Chaka, Z

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-w4y4pawe6
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: national identity; debt; Albanianness; Ismail Kadare; mythopoetics
• Subjects: French; Literature and folklore; Literature; Albanian literature