Amélie-Marie Goichon

Amélie-Marie Goichon (8 January 1894 – 8 August 1977^[1]) was a French orientalist. She studied Islamic philosophy and ethnography. Born in Poitiers, France, Goichon analyzed the works of Avicenna^[2][3] and conducted fieldwork in the M'zab region of Algeria during the 1920s.^[4] Her resulting book La vie féminine au Mzab: étude de sociologie musulmane (transl. Feminine Life in M'zab: A Study of Muslim Sociology) examined the lives of M'zab women, discussing their roles in family and society, marriage customs, and childbirth practices; and also exploring the religious life of women and the role of magic in their daily lives, among various other topics.^[5][6]

Académie Française awarded her the Broquette-Gonin Prize in Literature in 1974 for her work Jordanie réelle (Real Jordan).^[7]

In her article on Avicenna's tendency to rely on parables, Sarah Stroumsa contrasted Goichon's view that there is no particular significance in the parable as the chosen form relative to the substance of his philosophical teachings (according to Goichon, Avicenna adopted this style to keep his mind occupied while he was imprisoned in the fortress of Fardajan) to her approximate contemporary Henry Corbin, who "granted the style of the stories profound philosophical significance".^[8]

References

1. "Amélie-Marie Goichon (1894-1977)". data.bnf.fr (in French). Retrieved 5 January 2025.
2. Sarton, George (1941). "Mlle. Goichon's Studies on Avicennian Metaphysics". Isis. 33 (3). University of Chicago Press: 326–329. ISSN 0021-1753. JSTOR 330788. Retrieved 5 January 2025.
3. "The Philosophy of Avicenna and its Influence on Medieval Europe. By A. M. Goichon. Translated by M. S. Khan Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1969. Pp. ix, 119". Dialogue (Book review). 9 (3): 508–508. December 1970. doi:10.1017/S0012217300029346.
4. "Muslim Notables, French Colonial Officials, and the Washers of the Dead". French Politics, Culture and Society. Retrieved 5 January 2025.
5. "La vie féminine au Mzab – Etude de sociologie musulmane". kent.cdha.fr. Retrieved 5 January 2025.
6. Sweet, Louise Elizabeth (1970). Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East: An Anthropological Reader. Vol. 2. The Natural History Press. p. 238. It was not until 1925, when Mlle Goichon came to live in the Mzab, gained the confidence of some women, and was able to study family life, that any particulars concerning the life of women and small children became known at all.
7. "Amélie-Marie Goichon". www.academie-francaise.fr. Retrieved 5 January 2025.
8. Stroumsa, Sarah (1992). "Avicenna's Philosophical Stories: Aristotle's Poetics Reinterpreted". Arabica. 39 (2): 183–206. doi:10.1163/157005892X00166. ISSN 0570-5398. JSTOR 4057059. Archived from the original on 13 October 2022. Retrieved 13 October 2022.

Further reading

• De Souza Pereira, Rosalie Helena (4 May 2010). "Avicena e a filosofia oriental: história de uma controvérsia" [Avicenna and the oriental philosophy: history of a controversy]. Revista de Filosofia Aurora (in Brazilian Portuguese). 22 (30): 217. doi:10.7213/rfa.v22i30.2251. ISSN 1980-5934 – via periodicos.pucpr.br.