This study aims to investigate the stages of the development of the Jordanian novel and the emergence of the manifestations of alienation in it. The study hypothesizes that there are manifestations of ‘alienation’ in the Jordanian novel that entered the modernist world, which expressed, through its characters, the existential, personal, social and psychological alienation of the modern man.To achieve its goals, the study tries to confirm this hypothesis by conducting an in-depth analysis of the language, styles, techniques, and narrative forms that entered the modernist novel to express through the characters the existential, personal, social, political and psychological the alienation of the modern man. The novels that will be discussed are the following: al-Ḍaḥik (1970), by Ghālib Halsā, al-Baḥth ʿan Walid Masʿoud (1978), by Jabra Ibrāhim Jabra; Qamāt al-Zabad (1987), by Elias Farkouḥ; ʿAw … al-General la Yansa Kilabahu (1990), by Ibrāhim Nassralla; and al-Shazāya wa al-Fusayfisaʾ (1994), by Muʾnis al-Razaz, which represents the climax of experimentation in al-Razaz’s fictional works. The discussion of ‘form’ focuses on the development of the technical and linguistic forms of the novel from the traditional classical simple forms into the modernist complicated and experimental forms. The discussion of the ‘content’ focuses on the movement from traditional themes that concern the Arab culture and traditions into modernist themes, focusing mainly on the theme of ‘alienation’, its causes, its manifestations, and its psychological impacts on the Arab individual, particularly the intellectual particular, which are represented in the social, political and existential conditions that prevailed in ‘exile’ in general and in Jordan in particular, as a result of the Palestinian Nakba / Catastrophe in 1948, and the Six Days War in 1967.
Keywords: Alienation, Crisis, classical novels, exile., modernist novels
