La symbolique de trois prénoms féminins dans "Les Vertueux" de Yasmina Khadra

Abstract

The literary first name serves as the linguistic sign around which the understanding of the narrative isconstructed. The author of Les Vertueux demonstrates an immoderate worship for first names. In fact, he himself writes under a penna mere lated to the first names of hiswife, Yasmina Khadra. Our various readings of the author'sworks, particularly the most recent one, have prompted us to focus on the first names given to the three female characters in the novel, Abla, Lalla, and Mariem. We believe that for the author, first names belong to lexico-semantic classes just like a subject or a verb in a sentence. For Khadra, the first nameshapes the character, not the other way around. To him, the first name is real and not fictitious, appearing as an essential component of novelistic writing. The act of naming these characters is more social than literary because not only is the semantic-cultural significance profound, but also, the informed reader can grasp the depth of the character through the first name. Through a semio-onomastic analysis, we will attempt to understand the symbolic significance of the female first names chosen by the author. Three female first names, linked to the three emblematic figures in the narrative, will form the starting point of this exploration. We will inventory all discursive elements related to the three female characters and compare their eponymous first names with local historical, cultural, and religious data to highlight the extent of the symbolic charge of the names. This approach builds upon the works of Zonabend (2001) and Iliescu (2013), which emphasize the character'sawareness as an act intimately linked to naming.