Mahmoud Dervesh and The Palestinian Resistance: A Study of His Selected Works (Published)
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Dervesh (1941-2008) also called “the Poet of the Resistance” wrote poems of resistance integral to every Arab’s consciousness which includes 30 poetry and prose collections, translated into 35 languages, making everybody hear about his love of his usurped homeland. His poetic works such as Olive Leaves (1964), A Lover from Palestine (1966), Siege for the Praises of the Sea (1984) and Why Have you Left the Horse Alone (1995) have largely defined the Palestinian resistance. In 1997 a documentary was produced about him by French TV directed by noted French-Israeli director Simone Bitton. Darvesh is the recipient of many international literary awards including the Lotus prize in 1969, the Lenin prize in 1983, France’s highest medal as Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres in 1997 and the Moroccan Wissam of intellectual merit was handed to him by King Mohammad VI of Morocco. In 2001, he won the Lannan prize, a prize which recognizes people whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom, of imagination, inquiry, and expression for cultural freedom. Dervesh was a member of the Executive Committee of the PLO and as a result of his political activism, faced house arrest and imprisonment. He was also the editor in chief and founder of the prestigious literary review Al Karmel.
Keywords: Diaspora, Eden, Identity, Palestine, Refugee, Resistance, Zionist., dervish, exile., intifada
Universal Pro-Human Message Expressed in Diana Abu-Jaber’s Crescent (Published)
This paper attempts to tackle the most important humanistic themes dealt with in Diana Abu-Jaber`s novel Crescent (2003). The novel explores universal human themes connected with exile and the quest for identity. The story of Crescent is the story of the whole Arab immigrants living in exile. The novel revolves around a multi-cultural love story between an Iraqi man expelled out of his country and an Iraqi immigrant chef named Sirine. Diana highlights in the novel the painful feelings of people who leave their countries and live in exile. In many places, she refers to the sufferings of immigrants and what may occur to them in the countries they settle in. She further laments the real loss of depressed and frustrated people who are forced to leave their homelands. The writer`s prime focus on the humanistic, innovative, and compassionate aspects of Arab and Muslim culture is a proactive denouncement against the stereotyping viewpoints by which the majority of American people perceive refugees from middle-eastern countries. This biased view permitted the US government to rule the country over several years of military conflicts, binding force, and unattained human rights in Iraq with hardly any popular resistance. The researcher employs a critical and analytical approach in discussing the themes of the novel. This paper reveals the aesthetic dimensions in the story as realistic, romantic, and symbolic trends and how the writer combines them successfully to enhance the theme of human interaction within different ethnic groups.
Keywords: Culture, Identity, Immigrants, Middle East, crescent, exile.
Development of the Jordanian Novel and the Emergence of Manifestations of Alienation in it (Published)
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
The Impact of Exile on the Formation of Hyphenated Identities in Abu-Jaber’s Crescent (Published)
In Crescent (2003), Abu Jaber questions the meaning of identity in relation to exile. Sirine suspects if Hanif is drawn to the American or the Iraqi side of her, which immediately fractures identity into two conflicting aspects. She herself questions her identity as an Arab American. She wants to know which part of her identity defines her the most as she finds herself on the borderline between who she is and the way she appeals to Han. Her romance with Han opens her eyes to questions such as: Does she belong better in the Middle East where flavours, scents, pictures, and stories seem to be pulling her? Is she too American for Han? Do exiled people in this situation live in imaginary homes, or does guilt, as in Han’s case, become a defining factor that determines their hyphenated identities? This article addresses these questions. It examines how the notion of hyphenated identities inform the characters’ decisions and anxieties in the novel. What does the hyphen signify? In what ways can the novel be understood as a negation or an assertion of self-divided identity? In what ways does it celebrate and represent this hyphen that determines the diasporic condition.
Keywords: Diaspora, anglophone, crescent, exile., hyphenated, identities
THE USE OF ANCIENT MYTHS IN MODERN POETRY: THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS AS A CASE STUDY (Published)
The purpose of this study is to shed light on esthetic uses of Greek myth, its artistic and realistic uses, and the reasons for the allusions to it in contemporary poetry. Selected poetic texts will be analyzed for the use which some modern poets make of the legend of Sisyphus for expressing their views and for showing how they perceived its artistic value. Among these poets are Al-Sayyāb, Al-Bayātī , Adonis, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Muqāliḥ, as well as the Palestinians Aḥmad Daḥbūr, Murīd al-Barghūthī and Fārūq Muwāsī, all of whom made use of the legend in order to express both suffering and hope in the crisis of Arabs in current times, in an attempt to bring these across to the reader.
Keywords: Ancient, Myth, Sisyphus, Suffering, exile., nation, struggle, symbol