AWEJ. Special Issue on Literature No.2 October, 2014 Pp.152-157
Contrasting the Aesthetic with the Orientalist: A Comparative Study of Bowles and Bertolluci’s The Sheltering Sky/Skies
Aicha Ziyane
College of Letters and Humanities- Ben Msik
Hassan II University Casablanca-Mohammedia, Morocco
Abstract
The paper is a comparative study of Paul Bowles’ novel The Sheltering Sky (1977) and Bernardo Bertullocci’s film adaptation of the novel in his work The Sheltering Sky (1990). The aim is to contrast the aesthetic and the orientalist. Thus, there is an attempt to introduce an aesthetic reading into the novel and an orientalist viewing of the film so as to compare and contrast both texts using a textual analysis approach. Throughout the paper, in addition to detecting the film’s deviation from the novel, Bertollucci’s orientalist project is revealed while Bowles novel is aesthetically tested. The last part of the paper calls for questioning the degree of deviance occurring in the film and reconsidering the aesthetic implications of the novel.
Keywords: Aesthetic, Contrast, Film, Orientalist