scholarly journals Cultural Dilemma of The Arab Woman Expressed through Nature Imagery: An Ecocritical Study of Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 175-193
Author(s):  
Shilpa George
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Arab Woman ◽  
Nature Imagery ◽  
History Of

The Arab community is essentially a patriarchal one with a history of women being subjected to various kinds of afflictions and oppression under cultural, religious and societal laws. Though there is a collective consciousness now regarding the position of the Arab woman in the Arab world, with significant progress being made to emancipate and empower them, much needs to be done still. Set in the mid-20th century Jordan, Arab Anglophone author Fadia Faqir’sPillars of Salt portrays the tragic plight of Arab women at the hands of the traditional patriarchal Arab communities of Jordan. Nature plays a significant role in Faqir’s narrative wherein much of the miseries faced by the women characters are conveyed through rich nature imageries and analogies. This renders the novel the identity of an eco-fictional work and provides scope for analysis based on the ecological approaches as perceived in Emerson’s Nature to the more recent theory of Ecocriticism formulated by William Rueckert. This paper explores an ecocritical approach towards the position of women in the Arab society as expressed through profound eco-comparisons, imageries and analogies in Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt.

Stranger Fictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Arabic

Zaynab, first published in 1913, is widely cited as the first Arabic novel, yet the previous eight decades saw hundreds of novels translated into Arabic from English and French. This vast literary corpus influenced generations of Arab writers but has, until now, been considered a curious footnote in the genre's history. Incorporating these works into the history of the Arabic novel, this book offers a transformative new account of modern Arabic literature, world literature, and the novel. This book rewrites the history of the global circulation of the novel by moving Arabic literature from the margins of comparative literature to its center. Considering the wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century translation practices, the book argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These translations and the reading practices they precipitated form the conceptual and practical foundations of Arab literary modernity, necessitating an overhaul of our notions of translation, cultural exchange, and the global. The book shows how translators theorized the Arab world not as Europe's periphery but as an alternative center in a globalized network. It affirms the central place of (mis)translation in both the history of the novel in Arabic and the novel as a transnational form itself.

scholarly journals A Gynocritic-intersectional Reading of Raja Alem’s The Dove’s Necklace

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Najla R. Aldeeb
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Feminist Criticism ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Feminist Literary Criticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Arabic Fiction

When Showalter (1981) coined the term gynocriticism to undermine feminist methodicide, feminist literary criticism established a clear methodological structure for application (as cited in Barry, 2009, pp. 17-20). However, as a result of technology, globalization and political changes, women suffer not only because of their gender but also because of their class, race or religion, which Crenchaw (1989) summarizes in the term “intersectionality” (p. 538). Shedding light on women’s multiple identities can help contemporary societies spot the discrimination that contemporary women suffer from; consequently, these societies can find solutions to eliminate the sources of women’s double marginalization. Race, class, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation are intersecting loci of discriminations or privileges (McCall, 2005, p. 1771). Although this is a western paradigm, it can be applied to Saudi Arabian literature. The elements of gynocriticism and intersectionality are evident in the works of Raja Alem, a feminist writer from Mecca, Saudi Arabia and the first woman to win the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Due to the dearth of structured feminist literary criticism in the Arab world, this paper traces the history of feminist literary criticism and applies a gynocritic-intersectional model to Raja Alem’s novel, The Dove’s Necklace (2012) in order to examine the projection of women and help close the research gap in Arabic feminist criticism. The researcher probes the biological, linguistic, psychoanalytical and cultural depiction of the female characters in the novel along with their intersectional identities. The findings show that women’s overlapping identities influence the way they experience oppression and discrimination.

scholarly journals THE PORTRAIT OF THE AMERICAN WOMAN IN MARGARET MITCHELL'S NOVEL "GONE WITH THE WIND"

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1749-1753
Author(s):  
Lirije Ameti
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
American Woman ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
Woman Character ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Artistic Achievement ◽  
History Of

This theme, The Portrait of the American Woman in Margaret Mitchell's Novel " Gone With The Wind " is broad, challenging, interesting and among many contradictory to one another's point of view, at different social grounds , periods of time simply or merely of the fact that a female writer of this tremendous saga read mostly by women represents multi dimensional themes. It is an interweave of tradition, history , war, social classes, Reconstruction, transition and more. All these and many other themes written with a masterful disciplined imagination put in the longest novel in history. A masterpiece of 1037 pages published in 1939 and subsequently in the greatest and longest motion picture on screen. Piling up records and building it's own history and legends. The novel has sold in more than 25 million copies in at least 27 languages in thirty countries and in more than 185 editions according to the research conducted in 2004. These figures continue to increase, not to mention that the film is seen by more individuals than the total population of the USA. GWTW has grown and conflated into a phenomenon of American and later into a phenomenon of levels of basic appreciation after international popular culture. Thus criticism was attested at the levels of basic appreciation , often in the opposite poles of love and /or hate , the evaluation again in bipolar terms of praise and / or scorn. On the popular level the book was lauded and in the literary world it was defamed. Mitchell's novel " Gone With The Wind " was seen as important symbols of American culture forces. A serious biography in 1965 sparked reconsiderations simply by the assumption of Mitchell's importance as a writer. Other re- evaluations followed which asserted the literary quality of the work, notably in feminist terms. Attesting the qualities that critics wrote such as Michener who said: " The spiritual history of a region". Many other scholarly papers have been undertaken to attack it and completed to praise it. Because of the enormous popularity , readability , embodiment of the heroine woman character Scarlett O'Hara with many other women who saw themselves in those situations or experienced the same then or even nowadays. These multi themes to discuss about, issues primarily of women, the novel is defined as a woman's literary artistic achievement, seen through the eyes off a woman Scarlett herself and many other women characters. Is seen the distinction of the past and present of the old and new society. Mitchell herself says it is about courage and gumption to change as a necessity in order to survive war, reconstruction and transition. The search of survival by poor and nearly defeated young women who had no control or capacity to understand these tensions. Indeed this novel has become an icon of the US culture.

scholarly journals Télémaque, Ṭahṭāwī and the (Counter-) Enlightenment in the Arab World

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Hisham Hamad ◽  
Robbert Woltering
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Nineteenth Century France ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Movements ◽  
Political Lessons ◽  
Philosophical Writings

The Arab cultural awakening (Nahḍa) was one of the most pervasive and consequential intellectual movements in modern history. A key figure within this movement was the Egyptian civil servant, educator, translator and Islamic scholar Rifā‛a Rāfi‛ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–1873). Having visited Paris, he developed an interest in the moral, social and political ideas that were prevalent in nineteenth-century France. However, most current scholarship agrees that because of their secular nature, these ideas were of limited use for a devout Muslim such as Ṭahṭāwī in his own cultural and political context. In 1850 Ṭahṭāwī translated François Fénelon’s Les Aventures de Télémaque (1699), and while it has been suggested that this novel may have influenced Ṭahṭāwī’s later works, his translation of it has been mostly ignored by modern researchers. In this paper we demonstrate that Ṭahṭāwī found Télémaque to contain many potentially suitable moral and political lessons to translate into the modernizing Arabic-Islamic culture of the late nineteenth century. First, we present a history of the reception and cultural position of Fénelon’s Télémaque in France. This will help scholars understand it as a popular text across ideologies and philosophical movements. Then we discuss Ṭahṭāwī’s ideological makeup, specifically in relation to modernity. Lastly, we offer a discussion of passages from Ṭahṭāwī’s translation of Télémaque. This allows us to expose some of Ṭahṭāwī’s discursive strategies in Islamizing and Arabizing the concepts and ideas present in the novel, thus laying the conceptual groundwork for his later philosophical writings. On a broader level, this paper examines if and how Ṭahṭāwī’s own ideas and his appropriation of those of Fénelon as present in Télémaque can be plausibly included in the category of a ‘global Counter-Enlightenment’.

scholarly journals “Bordas sobre la trama esencial”: Needlework as Communal Rhetorical Practice in El obsceno pájaro de la noche

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Horan ◽  
Evan Chastain
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Culture Theory ◽  
Domestic Spaces ◽  
Rhetorical Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Sense Of Touch

This essay applies a feminist synthesis of rhetoric and material culture theory to José Donoso’s novel, El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970). Donoso’s novel depicts needlework as a communal rhetorical practice among women characters within enclosed communities. They sew, embroider, and repair. Drawing from Goggin and Tobin’s studies of needlework as rhetorical practice (2002, 2009a, 2009b, 2009), we investigate women’s needlework and sewing, contextualizing the historical and cultural referents within Chile’s long history of textile work, including the explication of epidermal aesthetics in Halart (2017). The paradoxically violent and restorative acts of sewing and repair provides the background for the many monologues the novel sets in the sewing circles of La Chimba convent. Each woman’s stitch enacts revenge for ongoing displacement and confinement to domestic spaces of home/convent. This essay argues that las viejas develop and claim a communal voice through their needlework upon the mute and bound monster of the imbunche, which becomes the fabric for their polyvocalic expression. In sewing the figure of the imbunche, the female characters participate in a tactile rhetoric that precedes verbal and occularcentric discourse and emphasizes the immediate and relational sense of touch. Our research is feminist as it recenters Donoso criticism on the female characters within his work, to showcase how their machinations and manipulations of materials enact an agency denied by a discourse and identity which prioritizes visual and verbal expression. We encourage Donoso studies towards a feminist focus on communities of women and process over individual and product.

scholarly journals Mother versus Daughter: Identifying the Female Archetypes and their Conflicts in Nick Joaquin’s “The Woman with Two Navels”

10.17158/497 ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara Crishia Victorino ◽  
Joycelyn Espana ◽  
Julaila Velez ◽  
Virgilind Palarca
Keyword(s):  
Women Characters ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Mother Daughter Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Archetypes ◽  
Relationship Of

<p>The Philippines has a long history of being conquered by the male-dominated west. We see evidences of these patriarchal politics through our literature. Most of these works are included in the Filipino literary canon. But there is an argument whether or not these required reading which actually perpetuated the sexist myths that prevailed in our society. Every after year, the students are presented with material teeming with sexual stereotypes that students do not easily recognize. Nick Joaquin is typically found in required reading lists. His award-winning novel “The Woman who had Two Navels” (1961) has been read in classrooms usually in the patriotic context. The aim of this study is to reread this classic literary masterpiece, and to identify the female archetypes present within, and to show their anti and pro feminist implications. The researchers used textual analysis to identify the images of women characters present in the novel, juxtaposing them against Female Archetypes based on Johnson’s classifications. Through textual analysis, the researchers provided textual evidences to support the claims. Tables were used as tally sheets. The results showed that the female protagonists depict multiple female archetypes that made the mother-daughter relationship of Concha and Connie very complex. Their contradicting archetypes prove that there is a male constructed competition between them. The novel is clearly more than just Joaquin’s account of the travails of post-Spanish Philippines. It is a reflection of a universal phenomenon of the male constructed competition between women. The archetypes are clearly antifeminist and therefore the novel should be read with care especially in the classroom.</p><p><strong><br /></strong></p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Female archetype, conflicts, Nick Joaquin, Philippines</p><div> </div>

scholarly journals Setting the Record Straight: The Literary History of Women Writers in the Arab World

1970 ◽  
pp. 84-87
Author(s):  
Faten Morsy
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women's Tradition

Is there a distinctive women's tradition in Arabic literature?To what extent are Arab women writers engaged in the process of social and political change in their respective countries? What are the cultural and politicalforces that helped shape the female literary tradition in the Arab world? These are some of the questions addressed in this extensive and informative reference onthe literary history of Arab women writers.

scholarly journals Narrating the Indescribable: Psycho-Traumatic Persona of the She in Rahimi’s The Patience Stone

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 401-412
Author(s):  
Saleem Akhtar Khan ◽  
Muhammad Uzair Khan
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
Trauma Theory ◽  
Female Character ◽  
Traumatic Experiences ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Traumatic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Talking Cure

The paper critiques Rahimi’s novel with reference to the representation of the traumatic experiences of the protagonist. Conversing with relevant postulates of trauma theory, the researchers have identified different dimensions of the excruciating encounters and, also, their ramifications. With the purpose to look for traces of both collective and individual trauma in the novel, the article negotiates the portrayal of the female character to expose multiple layers of the agony triggered by the sense of being victimized unjustly. The mere depiction of trauma is the problem with most literary narratives without shedding light on the healing process, despite the fact that theorists have engaged with the possible solutions for overcoming trauma. However, this novel is an exception that is why the recuperative aspect has been specifically focused. The analysis suggests that the novel is an attempt to give voice to the unspeakable, narrating the traumatic history, with the help of fiction because, in the Freudian idiom, telling a story is a ‘talking cure’ which helps in the healing process. Moreover, the act of narrating the traumatic history of a nation also proves to be palliative for the collective consciousness.

Immigrant Arab Women in Chile during the Renaissance (Nahda), 1910s-1920s

1970 ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
Sarah Limorté
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
New World ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Arab Woman ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 19Th Century

Levantine immigration to Chile started during the last quarter of the 19th century. This immigration, almost exclusively male at the outset, changed at the beginning of the 20th century when women started following their fathers, brothers, and husbands to the New World. Defining the role and status of the Arab woman within her community in Chile has never before been tackled in a detailed study. This article attempts to broach the subject by looking at Arabic newspapers published in Chile between 1912 and the end of the 1920s. A thematic analysis of articles dealing with the question of women or written by women, appearing in publications such as Al-Murshid, Asch-Schabibat, Al-Watan, and Oriente, will be discussed.

“What Freedom?”

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-331
Author(s):  
John Owen Havard
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Free Condition ◽  
Narrative Design ◽  
Economic Liberalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
John Owen

John Owen Havard, “‘What Freedom?’: Frankenstein, Anti-Occidentalism, and English Liberty” (pp. 305–331) “If he were vanquished,” Victor Frankenstein states of his monstrous creation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), “I should be a free man.” But he goes on: “Alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys when his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt, his lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, pennyless, and alone, but free.” Victor’s circumstances approximate the deracinated subject of an emergent economic liberalism, while looking to other destitute and shipwrecked heroes. Yet the ironic “freedom” described here carries an added charge, which Victor underscores when he concludes this account of his ravaged condition: “Such would be my liberty.” This essay revisits the geographic plotting of Frankenstein: the digression to the East in the nested “harem” episode, the voyage to England, the neglected episode of Victor’s imprisonment in Ireland, and the creature’s desire to live in South America. Locating Victor’s concluding appeal to his “free” condition within the novel’s expansive geography amplifies the political stakes of his downfall, calling attention to not only his own suffering but the wider trail of destruction left in his wake. Where existing critical accounts have emphasized the French Revolution and its violent aftermath, this obscures the novel’s pointed critique of a deep and tangled history of English liberty and its destructive legacies. Reexamining the novel’s geography in tandem with its use of form similarly allows us to rethink the overarching narrative design of Frankenstein, in ways that disrupt, if not more radically dislocate, existing rigid ways of thinking about the novel.

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