Life in Palestine Under the Rule of the Ottoman Empire According to Ibrahim Nassralla's Novel: Zaman al-Khoyoul al-Bayda'

This study deals with the Palestinian administrative, economic, political, educational, intellectual, and national dimensions as they are reflected in the stories and events of the historical novel Zaman al-Khoyoul al-Baida' by the Palestinian writer Ibrahim Nassralla, The novel that covers three generations from 1880s to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The events take place in a Palestinian village called 'Hadiya ', which serves as a representative of all Palestine. The study proves that the writer emphasizes the Palestinian identity through the stories that he collected from people who lived through the three periods of occupation of Palestine: the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate and Israel, but the main focus is on the Ottoman Period. Stylistically, the novel has a special printing style. The oral stories are typed in italics in order to distinguish them from written stories. To investigate the information in the people's quoted stories, the events of the novel and the writer's arguments and his descriptions of the life of local Palestinians, the study relies on Paul Hamilton's theory of historicism , which is a critical way of using historical contexts to interpret narrative texts.

A Veiled Love in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

The particular structure and organization of Jane Eyre surely constitute only some of the traits that favor survival of this great classic for all these centuries. They represent the hallmark of Jane Eyre, through which Charlotte Brontë has spoken to a large number of readers, using different cultural, geographical and historical interrelations in unexpected ways and forms, but always suggestive and successful. This paper aims at highlighting some of the different occultation strategies brought into play by the two emblematic, magnetic and fascinating protagonists, who sit at the loving table in Jane Eyre. The ability to conceal and unveil, to allow the feeling of love to be subtended and misunderstood is certainly one of the building blocks of the soul of a classic like Jane Eyre. It offers the possibility of maturing an interior path of redemption, of knowledge and affirmation of the self, within a delicate system, in balance between drives and reason. The continuous game of parts, between presence and absence, between what is shown and what one actually is, remains mysterious, elusive, and in perpetual becoming. Hiding love thus represents a gateway to the complexity of reality and at the same time allows us to experience other fascinations and sensations that would otherwise remain only, totally ‘ideal’.

Freedom as the Antithesis of Commitment in Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Flies (Les Mouches)

In the mid of the twentieth century, French Existentialism was a predominant doctrine that significantly enriched and influenced the literary scene in Europe during the Post-War area. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), the founder of Existentialism, is both a professional philosopher and a talented man of letters whose literary achievements represent a declarative embodiment of his Existentialist philosophy. In his 1943 drama, The Flies (Les Mouches), Sartre puts the Greek myth into a drastically innovative structure, where contemporary issues and values are presented through classical outlines. The current study aims to present a critical analysis of Sartre's depiction of the Electra/Orestes myth in The Flies through demonstrating how Greek mythology becomes an essential substructure of the play's Existentialistic framework, on the one hand, and questioning the credibility of the Sartrean concept of freedom and commitment, as illustrated in the play, on the other hand. The study utilizes the Existentialist philosophy as a theoretical framework in order to elucidate that the Sartrean conception of freedom and commitment is paradoxically antithetical. The research investigates how Orestes has been theoretically free and the extent to which he strives, throughout the drama, to transform this abstract freedom into a concrete experience by committing himself to a specific action: murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. However, as the study proves, this Existentialist freedom becomes an illusion in the sense that Orestes' commitment to the Argives makes him a captive of society; by choosing commitment, he dismisses his freedom. The researcher has chosen "Freedom" and "Commitment" as the main topic of the present study in order to expose Sartre's existentialistic awareness of modern human beings' dilemma under the influence of all forms of aggression and highlight the discrepancy between theoretical philosophy and real-life experiences. The study adopts an interdisciplinary analytical approach where myth, philosophy, and drama are dovetailed and fused in order to expand the scope of the analysis.

Working in Unfamiliar Territory: A Rhetorical Criticism of the Work-Related Sequences in The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Shaun Tan’s 2006 wordless graphic novel The Arrival presents readers with an affecting portrait of the immigrant experience. Drawing from semiotic theory and the narrative paradigm, this paper offers a rhetorical criticism of the scenes in The Arrival related to the main character’s employment-related experiences. The paper proposes a novel theoretical concept – a semiotics of unfamiliarity – and, guided by this concept and the narrative paradigm, concludes that The Arrival is an effective rhetorical artifact that poignantly presents important information about the professional difficulties faced by immigrants. It is recommended that The Arrival be considered for use in organizations that employ newly arrived immigrants.