Abstract

In the novel Retable-la reverie Chantal Chawaf's excessive displays of convention form an integral part of her mimetic strategy: a hyperbolic parody of gender and genre that undermine their performance as norms, as well as the values that support and sustain them. Critics emphasize that her dazzling combinations of words, images and metaphors forge new possibilities for conceptualizing the body, particularly the female body. Nonetheless, she remains a controversial figure among feminist and literary critics who insist that traditional archetypes of woman and established literary convention contaminate her avant-garde practice of ecriture feminine . ;Constructions of Gender and Genre questions the limits critics have imposed on Chawaf's ecriture feminine. In effect, her novels not only subvert traditional literary and generic norms, they work within, yet against, the establishment of ecriture feminine itself to expose and expand the boundaries of this avant-garde writing practice. ;Drawing from Luce Irigaray's practice of textual mimicry and Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, Chapter One lays the theoretical groundwork for this study of Chawaf's mimetic strategy. Through an examination of paratextual elements, Chapter Two explores how Retable-la reverie interrogates the boundaries of texts and bodies. A close reading of the novel, Chapter Three examines feminine writing of the body as a subversive mimetic process and as a locus of metamorphosis. The concluding chapter suggests how the author's mimetic strategy operates in other novels by Chawaf