From magical realism to Fatima Mernissi’s autobiographical narrative, Dreams of Trespass: 'Tales of a Harem Girlhood'

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to restore the notions of magical realism and its development along the XX century from Europe through Latin America to reach the African continent. A kind of vision that is expressed in Moroccan literature written in French and especially in Fátima Mernissi’s literary work Sueños en el umbral (1994).

It’s an autobigraphical narrative able to reflect popular traditions in different forms of myths and miraculous manifestations. It is also a mixture between folkloric and contemporary, usual and inusual nuances. A cascade of tales where imaginary borders with the day-to-day, where disrupted female characters in the harem wonder about mysterious phenomena that occur in front of their eyes, where amazment provoks some disagreement in this type of atmosphere, where reality seems to be no more univocal, decisive or palpable but aleatory, undulating and diverse.