Intertextual Strategy and Referential Transformation in Malika El Assimi’s Poetic Discourse: A Study of Shay’… Lahu Asmā’

Abstract

This study aims to examine the strategies of intertextuality in Shay’un Lahu Asmā’ by Malika El Assimi, and to reveal the mechanisms through which intertextuality operates as well as its role in shaping meaning and poetic vision. The research is grounded in a central question: how do intertextual mechanisms function within El Assimi’s poetic discourse, and to what extent does intertextuality contribute to transforming cultural referents and reintegrating them into a new poetic texture?

The significance of this study lies in its approach to intertextuality as a meaning-producing textual strategy, with particular attention to the representations of religious, prophetic, and mythic referents within the poetic corpus. The choice of this topic is further motivated by the richness of El Assimi’s poetic experience, marked by a high density of textual interaction, and by the need to examine this phenomenon within a unified analytical framework.

The originality of the research stems from adopting a semantic and hermeneutic perspective centered on the concept of referential transformation, which highlights the qualitative contribution of intertextuality to the construction of poetic discourse. The study employs a descriptive-analytical methodology based on close reading of poetic texts and the exploration of their semantic and symbolic markers, drawing on selected tools from contemporary textual criticism.

The findings indicate that intertextuality constitutes a structural component in El Assimi’s poetry, contributing to the expansion of semantic horizons and linking poetic experience to a plural cultural memory that is continually reshaped within contemporary poetic discourse.