Browsing by Author "Sebih Hanane"

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    The Representation of Gender and Religion in Robert Hichens’s The Garden of Allah (1904): An Orientalist Study
    (Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou, 2025) Sebih Hanane; Saidj Liticia
    This research explores the British literary representation of Algeria under French rule during the early 1900’s. This dissertation critically analyses Robert Hichens’s The Garden of Allah (1904) through Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, with a particular focus on the novel’s construction of gender and religion in colonial Algeria. Borrowing key ‘Orientalist’ concepts such as “The Orient,” stereotyping, binary opposition and hegemony, the research paper argues that British literary narratives, particularly The Garden of Allah, project cultural superiority and moral authority onto the colonized Algerians by misrepresenting their gender and religious identities on the one hand and positively representing the West from the other. It explores the representation of Algerian men and women, along with the Western characters, arguing that Algerian gender stereotyped and Orientalized, to reinforce French colonial and patriarchal ideologies, and the Western in broad terms. Moreover, the present work analyses the representation of religious discourses in the novel and puts emphasis on the fact that Christianity is portrayed as a civilizing force while Islam is marginalized and exoticized. Through a close and textual reading of Hichens’s novel and implementation of postcolonial theories, the dissertation concluded that The Garden of Allah contributes as a colonial text in the imperialist propaganda that supports colonialism and calls for a civilizing mission and settlement project.