Abstract:
The desert is a strange place, a place of affective, mental and mythical projections. Far from being a mere sand area, it has always given rise to the individual and collective realm of fancy, communicatingwith the human consciousness as well as unconsciousness and giving rise to a duality of feelings solidly grounded in this space. Furthermore, the images which are linked to it create the most contradictory feelings: it is of course
perceived as a place of isolation, of wandering, of instability, of the negation of death, but also, paradoxically, as a place of comfort, of self-reconstruction and carries in it the idea of perseverance of life. The desert is an immaculate place which has kept its original purity in spite of the corruptive civilization. It is, in fact, opposed to the “civilized” and rational world, offering the knowledge of the original purity spreading endlessly. That is what makes its paradox and consequently what makes it become a feared and strongly attractive
place.
If the realm of fancy of the desert generally revolves around the same parameters, it is mainly linked to the strong symbolic connotations which generate sometimes surprising divergences. So, this space dealt with in the Literature is not always perceived realistically.
It is a recreated place, transformed and strongly integrating the real space due to an inevitable process of complex projection of individual or collective unconscious motives related to the conscious filters of culture. This study aims at investigating, through some literary texts (Algerian and others), the representation of the desert. It also aims at understanding how the desert is perceived from a multidisciplinary view, analyzing its place in the text and its relationship with other spaces, transforming the geographical reality according to the socio-historical context to which it belongs.
