THE INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE IN RELIGIOUS CONTEXT IN JUAN GOYTISOLO'S QUARANTINE NOVEL

Abstract

Juan Goytisolo is one of the most important authors of Spanish contemporary literature. The author does not know very well only the elements of Western culture but also Eastern world and he uses in his novels the elements of both cultures. Based on this the main purpose of this essay that published is to study Eastern and Western cultures in Quarantine novel by the way of the Christian and Islamic elements. Born in Barcelona before a short time of the Civil War (1936-1939) Goytisolo is one of the authors of unlucky generation of the 30s spending their childhood in times of the Civil War. He passed his youth in the period of the religious and cultural intolerance of the dictatorship of General Franco starting after the Civil War and for this reason settled definitely in Paris. In Paris the author started to get interested in different religions and cultures due to the atmosphere of freedom. The events in Algeria caused him to get to know the Eastern culture. Through the Algerian War of Independence the author got disappointed because of the behavior of the French government and intellectuals. The detention of many Africans by the police in France led to a change of the perspective of the writer about Europe and its culture caused the author to search about the Eastern philosophy and culture. Believing in the misunderstanding of Islam in the Western world Goytisolo has written a lot of works in relation to the Islamic culture. He includes in his novels the elements of Christianity as well as the features of Islamic culture. One of these books in which he uses both cultures is the Quarantine novel published in 1991. The author impressed by Divine Comedy which is one of the most important books for the Christian world describes in the novel barzakh exiting in Islamic eschatology. Goytisolo succeeds in combining Western and Eastern cultures in the same book in this way. Seen from another perspective the novel also holds political issues. The author who follows the global issues and uses them in his novels mentions the Gulf War and the results of this war happening at the time of writing the novel. In this context the writer divulges the effects of the Western world on this war and criticizes its political intervention on the Eastern geography.