File:When Reality Goes Beyond Fiction. The Question of Realism in the Novels of El Mostafa Bouignane.pdf

English: If we were to trust appearances, we would be tempted to consider Bouignane as the Zola of Moroccan literature in French. With him, the story abounds in indices of readability and likelihood as they were listed by Philippe Hamon: detailed documentation, inscription of the plot in a marked historical framework, spatial anchoring of the fiction in known, familiar places. The story puts in place, at first sight, a reading contract based on the shared conviction that what is told is very real. However, the narrative dynamic implies a different orientation. The initial horizon of expectation is set only to better be exceeded. We then witness the intelligent integration of the fictional component within the narrative framework itself. The entire romantic universe of El Mostafa Bouignane is therefore built around the bipolarity (reality/fiction) so that the mimetic power of romantic narration, and of the arts in general, is constantly questioned. This original way of approaching the status of the fictional takes us away from the transparency of the realistic narrative which starts from the reassuring postulate of the adequacy between reality and fiction. From there, it would be relevant to point out that the naïve realism of El Mostafa Bouignane does not prevent the deployment of a subtle intelligence in the face of reality. Otherwise, how can we understand that the novelist likes to celebrate forms of fiction stripped of the mimetic function? Above all, how can we understand that he does not hesitate to reverse the order of values by recalling that fiction is not necessarily where we expect it? In the marginalized neighborhoods of Fez, the reality far exceeds anything the wildest imagination can hope to achieve. In other words, the novelist does not need to resort to his creative genius to stand out from verisimilitude. The implausible emerges from reality itself. This is an ultimate stage in the destabilization of the benchmarks and reading habits of realistic narrative.