The Role of Intertextuality in Voicing the Marginalised in Abdulrazak Gurnah's By the Sea and Gravel Heart.

Abstract

This study analyses the role of intertextuality in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea (2001) and Gravel Heart (2017) in voicing the marginalised and oppressed characters in the colonial/postcolonial context. Set in the early years of independence, during the turbulent decolonisation period, and in the aftermath of the violent Zanzibar Revolution of 1964, both novels explore how shifting political power destabilises society and disrupts long-standing structures, exploiting the weak and the vulnerable, and denying their fundamental human rights. Inhabiting such a post-revolutionary world, Gurnah’s protagonists have to leave Zanzibar, either seeking asylum or pursuing the education denied them at home, only to confront new forms of discrimination, oppression, and hardship in the former coloniser’s land, England. Within this framework, intertextuality serves as a crucial narrative strategy that enables Gurnah to amplify the voices of the oppressed and to challenge the dominant accounts maintained by both colonial and post-revolutionary authorities. By employing various techniques of intertextuality, these narratives resist simplistic understandings of migrant identities by highlighting the multiplicity and psychological complexity of marginalised subjects shaped by displacement and trauma. Both novels incorporate major hypotexts alongside minor references. Structurally, By the Sea and Gravel Heart echo A Thousand and One Nights (800-1400 AD) through their partially episodic storytelling. Contextually, By the Sea draws on Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1856), while Gravel Heart resonates with Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1623). Further minor source texts, Homer’s Odysseus (750-700 BC), Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1623), and Julius Caesar (1623) illuminate the characters’ circumstances and strengthen the reader’s empathetic connection in By the Sea. Additionally, both allude to holy books and religious regulations, as well as including the literary trope of cuckoldry, as a critical issue from the perspective of social morality. This thesis analyses Gurnah’s multifaceted intertextual strategies in By the Sea and Gravel Heart with a view to amplifying the voices of marginalised colonial and postcolonial subjects in the novels. The direct or indirect connections between the novels and their source texts affirm that no text exists in isolation; all texts interact, and in the case of these novels, this interaction enriches the portrayal of oppressed characters and ensures their voices are heard.