Feminist Criticism in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Ibrahim Ahmed’s Janî Gel

This paper investigates the concepts of Feminism and Feminist Criticisms to identify their features in two novels; Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and Ibrahim Ahmed’s Janî Gel. The theoretical and historical backgrounds of Feminism and the other Feminist Criticisms are presented according to their importance. The paper then introduces the two novels by presenting their plot summary. This paper tries to answer how two prominent writers, one British and one Kurdish, discuss women issues. The author wants to investigate whether both writers’ cultural upbringing and social background affect the way they present women in their respective novels. Through quotations taken from the novels, one learns about the writers’ ideas regarding women’s issues; economic, social, psychological, and political. In conclusion, the present study argues that women’s experiences in English society and Kurdish society have many similarities; however, despite the many similarities, there lay differences regarding the attitudes of both writers towards women issues and representation. For instance, Wood presents an ideal female character to oppose women’s traditional roles in society in her novel. On the other hand, Ahmed paints vivid imagery of what women go through without solid women characters. Thus, this paper hopes to provide future students and researchers with helpful material on Feminism, Feminist Criticisms, and the analysis of both novels, especially the Kurdish one, since research is scarce on it.

In a Melting Pot of Autobiography: Pickthall’s With the Turk in Wartime and the Cause of Islam

Marmaduke Pickthall, a half-forgotten British novelist of the early twentieth century, has come back to the spotlight over the past few years. His Near Eastern novels and short stories have started to receive attention in contemporary scholarship but not his two autobiographies. This essay aims at tackling the more neglected piece of the two, With the Turk in Wartime, that deserves attention because of its intricate amalgamation of several features of the genre of autobiography as manifested across its history within the tradition of English literature. Analysis finds that Pickthall’s autobiography has some Romantic, Victorian, and Modern elements as well as some old characteristics of the genre elaborately interwoven into its structure. The study also traces the use that Pickthall makes of this unique autobiography and how the commingling of diverse elements allows him to turn a usually subjective genre into a public cause and dedicate it to the service of Islam. This essay highlights both the diversity that the literary history of the genre lends to Pickthall’s autobiography and the socio-political service it renders to the faith that the author has long esteemed and will ultimately convert to not long after writing this autobiography.

Exploring the Postcolonial Concept through the Eye of European Expansionism and Imperialism

The Postcolonial study has become very popular—it deals with colonial issues, cultural hegemony, imperialist subjects, and subservient topics. The postcolonial analysis mainly mostly involves Africa, America, Asia, and the Middle East. The imperial forces like England and France were the prominent actors in this venture. Thus, the postcolonial began after these imperial forces had left their former colonies. The formerly colonized countries were given political independence, and they began to govern themselves. However, the postcolonial study began to gain significant attention from Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), in which he explains how Africa, the Middle East, and Asia were established on the western Imperialist structure. Edward Said explains exclusively that Orientalism vehemently accentuates the disparity between the west, their theories, social orders, literary pieces, the orient political history, tradition, norms, ideology, religion, and destiny. It dramatically reflects how the colonized adapted the cultural identity of their colonizers. The postcolonialism has been used to remember a set of conjectures and practices—and it also explains how colonialism has become a prominent and constant record. This article explores the postcolonial study, delineates the available resources that present the idea of postcolonialism, colonialism, and the effect of the Western imperialist system on the former colonies. The article also reflects Homi Bhabha’s cultural hybridity; he explains how mimicry plays a significant role in making the colonized adopt the culture of their colonizers.

The Poetics of Female Resistance in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night

The present paper is an attempt to study the female quest for freedom in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night from a French feminist perspective. Indeed, Mary Tyrone resorts to body language as a form of resistance against gender and cultural confinement. French feminism will be deployed to understand female non-verbal subversive strategies. Luce Irigaray argues that language is male-dominated and male discourse misrepresents women. Accordingly, body language can be interpreted as a silent form of female resistance against patriarchal hegemony. It is the case of Mary who is irritated because of the male gaze and she uses madness as a silent language of resistance against female and ethnic stereotypes. Mary is a rebellious woman who defies her three men for being indifferent about her dilemma of disillusionment with the institution of marriage. She is treated as a wife, a mother or a daughter and she is often assigned the role of ‘the Angel in the House.’ French feminism will be used to understand the way O’Neill reshapes female identity and he calls for not linking female identity to the social roles. The aim is to study the non-verbal communication, the behavioural, kinetic, gestural and psychological profile of Mary. The paper will also focus on the hardships Mary faces and the ways she reconstructs female identity. The paper draws on the French feminist arguments about female madness as a form of resistance and it criticizes the conventional claim about madness as s form of weakness.

Bewilderment between Might and Right: Tawfiq al-Hakim’s The Sultan’s Dilemma (al- Sulṭan al-Ha’ir)

The Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898- 1987) is one of the leading figures in Arabic literature and drama. In his masterpiece, The Sultan’s Dilemma (1960), al-Hakim discusses an eternal question, which is mightier and has a lasting, influential role. Is it the power of authority or the power of the principles? Is it the sword or the law? The play is set in the medieval past, but its moral is addressed to the modern world. It explores the legitimacy of power through the character of a Mamluk Sultan raised into power. Suddenly, this Sultan faced a dilemma that he is neither a legible ruler nor released from the slavery of the earlier Sultan. Hence, the Sultan finds himself trapped between using forceful authority to establish his kinghood or applying the rightful law that might be difficult to be achieved, and it might take time. Sultan’s dilemma symbolizes the political predicament that the modern world is facing.

Investigating the Translation Strategies Used in Rendering Cultural Bound Expressions in Barghouthy’s Memoire I Was Born There, I Was Born Her

This study investigates the translation strategies used in translating 25 cultural references and expressions in Mourid Barghouty’s autobiography ‘I Was Born There, I Was Born Here’ (2009) from Arabic into English. The results of this research may assist the trainee translators to improve their understanding of the effect of culture on the quality of the translation. The researchers adopt two theoretical models: Venuti’s domestication and foreignization (1998) and Ivir’s (1987) procedures for the translation of cultural references. This study tries to find out to what extent the translation has accounted to render the original cultural bound expressions maintaining their meaning in the target language. The researchers adopt a qualitative research since the data analysis is based on analytical and descriptive approaches. After analyzing the selected data, the researchers find out that the domestication strategy has been the most frequently-used strategy at (52%), and foreignization comes second at (48%). The procedure of substitution has been used the most (seven times), followed by literal translation and borrowing with the same number of times (six times), then defining the elements of culture (four times), then omission (twice). Lexical creation and addition have not been used at all. The findings also show that the translator has managed to capture the intended meaning sought by the original author in most extracts. The researchers recommend that translators of culture-bound expressions should be aware of the two involved cultures. This helps them to determine the cultural context in which a text takes place, so they can achieve the closest equivalents in the target text.

Translating Imperative Sentences from English into Indonesian: COVID-19 Outbreak Text

The imperative sentences in the source language are categorized as imperative instructions. World health organization instructs the general population not to over-take information when reading or searching for information about Corona Virus Disease 2019 because it affects our mentality. It also instructs to avoid using unhelpful coping strategies. The imperative structure rules for English and Indonesian are different. This paper aims to explore the translation techniques used in translating imperative sentences in the ‘Mental health and psychosocial considerations during the COVID-19 outbreak’ text into Indonesian. The authors use Molina and Albir’s (2002) translation techniques. Data collection is done by taking twenty-three the imperatives in the source language of thirty imperative sentences in the text. The imperative sentences in the SL which have infinitive verbs without to are followed by a noun, verb-ing, past participle, adjective, and second person reflexive pronoun. It is found the suffix -lah to emphasize the verb in the TL. Twenty-two data consist of positive imperative sentences and one negative imperative sentence. The results show that from the twenty-three data, the authors found that there were six translation techniques used by the authors as the translators, namely: compensation, establish equivalent, reduction, transposition, literal, and modulation. The authors used literal translation mostly, and it is done because the starting point of the imperative sentences are at the initial of the sentence and they are readable in the TL. The imperative is the starting of meaning for the source language and the target language. The readers are more acceptable to understand the context of the text. They are expected to implement the instructions in their daily lives.

The Psychological Makeup of Scottie’s Character in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo

This paper aims at studying the psychological makeup of Scottie’s character in Vertigo (1958), a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and usually considered one of his masterpieces. The paper emphasizes the importance of analyzing Scottie’s character from a psychoanalytic point of view, especially the images, dreams, and schizophrenic duality of his personality. The significance of the study lies in its attempt to resolve the argument about Scottie’s story. Some critics consider this story a fictional dream that resulted from the conflict that Scottie suffered from in the past in intense psychological trauma. On the other hand, the story is a complex murder story planned by an evil character called “Gavin.” To resolve this conflict of opinion, this paper tries to explain the complexity of Scottie’s surface and analyze it according to some psychoanalytic theories and concepts such as Freud’s theory of the Unconscious, and the idea of fantasy, and the dream work. The researchers conclude that considering Vertigo a dream is one of the ways that help to resolve the conflict about Scottie’s character and the film as a whole.

The Quranic Conditionally Pharyngealized Sounds: An Optimality Theory Perspective

This paper investigates the Qur’ānic conditionally pharyngealized sounds which are /rʕ/, /l/, and /a:/. The Qur’ānic /rʕ/ sound undergoes a depharyngealization process. The Qur’ānic /l/ sound in the word Allah, on the other hand, exhibits pharyngealization, as does the Qur’ānic /a:/ sound. Hence, the study aims to provide a thorough examination of these phonological processes within the Optimality Theory framework. The study also attempts to answer the following questions: (1) What constraints are considered to account for the pharyngealization of the Qur’ānic sounds /l/ and /a:/ and the depharyngealization of the Qur’ānic sound /rʕ/ in the Holy Qur’ān? and (2) How does the grammar rank these constraints to achieve the pharyngealization of the Qur’ānic sounds /l/ and /a:/ and the depharyngealization of the Qur’ānic sound /rʕ/ in the Holy Qur’ān? Both questions have been fully addressed. In addition, this study has proven that the pharyngealized /rʕ/ is the underlying representation of the Qur’ānic alveolar trill sound. This was achieved by demonstrating [rʕ] and [r] allophones environments. Also, the study has shown that the pharyngealized [lʕ] and the non-pharyngealized [l] in the word Allah are comparable to the dark /l/ in English. The Qur’anic /a:/ acquires the [RTR] feature from the preceding pharyngealized sound where it spreads its [RTR] feature rightward to the /a:/. The study concludes that the constraint-based analysis could provide a plausible accounted for examining these phonological processes in the Holy Qur’ān.

The Reception of Ernest Hemingway’s Works in Albanian Literature and Culture

The main aim of this paper is to illuminate the positive reception and influence of Hemingway’s translated work in the Albanian-speaking world. On the whole, Hemingway’s reception in Albanian literature and culture has largely been overlooked and it thus requires more profound attention and consideration. Hence, this paper will attempt to fill up a large vacuum that existed so far in Ernest Hemingway’s reception in Albanian literature and culture.“Jeta e re,” one of the most reputable literary journals in Kosova, published several journalistic and literary critiques on Hemingway written by various Albanian and international authors throughout the 20th century. Using a critical and comparative literary approach and by referencing these published prefaces, introductions, articles, reviews, etc. mainly by Albanian authors, this paper details and analyzes the research, journalism, and literary criticism published in “Jeta e re” regarding Hemingway’s works. The paper concludes that Hemingway’s literary works and masterpieces were translated and published frequently and were received with warmth and enthusiasm, leading to Hemingway becoming one of the most admired authors among Albanian readers.