This thesis introduces the work of the Syrian playwright, Sacd Allah Wannus, one of the few modern Arab dramatists, who have persistently pursued the development of a vigorous and innovative indigenous tradition of drama in the Arab world. In the face of considerable odds, both in Syria and in other Arab countries, he has managed consistently to write serious and challanging works for the theatre. The study will briefly give a historical background to the emergence of modem theatre in Syria making comparisons with developments in Egypt and the Lebanon. It will look into Wannus's own life, his family background, education and career. It will examine the influence of the philosophy of Existentialism, the theatre of the Absurd, Marxism and the epic theatre on Wannus, through a critical and thorough analysis of his plays. It will also discuss Wannus's own theories and ideas regarding the role and the function of the theatre in the Arab world.

This research investigates the field of translation in an Egyptain context around the work of the Egyptian writer and Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz by adopting Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological framework. Bourdieu’s framework is used to examine the relationship between the field of cultural production and its social agents. The thesis includes investigation in two areas: first, the role of social agents in structuring and restructuring the field of translation, taking Mahfouz’s works as a case study; their role in the production and reception of translations and their practices in the field; and second, the way the field, with its political and socio-cultural factors, has influenced translators’ behaviour and structured their practices. In this research, it is argued that there are important social agents who have contributed significantly to the structure of the field and its boundaries. These are key social agents in the field namely; the main English language publisher in Egypt, the American University in Cairo Press (AUCP); the translators: Denys Johnson-Davies, Roger Allen and Trevor Le Gassick; and the author, Naguib Mahfouz. Their roles and contributions are examined and discussed through the lens of Bourdieu’s sociology. Particular focus is given to the author Mahfouz and his award of the Nobel Prize, and how this award has influenced the field of cultural production and its social agents. Also, it is argued that socio-cultural factors in the field, in the period between 1960s and 2000s, affected the translators’ practices in terms of modes of production of Mahfouz’s works. To investigate the influence of these factors on translators’ practices in the field, empirical examination is conducted, at the textual level, on a corpus of six translated novels written by the same author, Mahfouz. It is shown that the translators have an increased tendency, over time, towards applying a foreignising approach in their translations of culture-specific items. The translators’ behaviour, which is a result of their habitus, is correlated to political and socio-cultural factors in the field of translation. That is, based on interviews conducted with the translators, it has been found that there are particular factors influenced their translational habitus and, thus, their practices during the production process of the translations.

The object of this research was to discover to what extent Badr Shakir as-Sayyab was a Romantic, the exact nature of his Romanticism, and the part played by Symbolism in his verse. As-Sayyab's literary career is normally divided into the Romantic, the Committed or Symbolic, and finally the Subjective which is often seen as a return to his early Romantic tendencies. It has however become clear in the course of this study that as-Sayyab was a Romantic from his earliest verse and remained one throughout his life. But his Romanticism was not restricted to the negative genre of Arabic verse of the 1930s and 1940s (Chapter I) but extended beyond into the realms of more genuine Romantic theories which make the individual's expression of emotion and convictions the mainstay of literature and art generally. Thus as-Sayyab's Romanticism can be divided into three major phases. Because he borrowed many Symbolist devices but employed them within a Romantic framework, he should perhaps be called a "Symbolist Romantic" (Chapter V). Thus as-Sayyab always relied on his personal expression of ideas and emotions in his verse and shunned artificiality and escapism, and was undoubtedly one of the great masters of Romantic verse.

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This thesis investigates various form of women’s resistance to male domination in Kuwaiti society, as represented in Kuwaiti women’s fiction. Two short stories: Hayfā’ Hāshim’s “al-Intiqām al-rahīb” (1953) and Laylā al-‘Uthmān’s “Min milaff imra’s” (1979), and three novels: al-‘Uthmān’s <i>Wasmiyya takhruj min al-bahr</i> (1986), Tayba al-Ibrāhīm’s <i>Mudhakkirāt khādim</i> (1995), and Fawziyya S. al-Sālim’s <i>Muzūn</i> (2000) are closely analysed, drawing from Marxist-feminist literary criticism. I argue that these texts portray their respective heroines, representing pre-oil generations of Kuwaiti women – born before or in the first half of the twentieth century – as resistant and/or revolutionary figures, contrary to the common notion of their stereotypical passivity and submissiveness. In view of the fact that these texts, as well as some others that are not represented here, form a minority among Kuwaiti women’s fiction, they are here considered as ‘feminist revolutionary’ texts. Part One introduces Kuwait and its people, with special reference to the development of Kuwaiti fiction (Chapter One), and the Kuwaiti female literary tradition (Chapter Two). Part Two (Chapters Three through Six) demonstrates how the Kuwaiti patriarchal tradition has affected, and continues to affect, race, class and gender relations in Kuwait, in a way that is discriminatory against and oppressive to women. An example of this is found in the sex-related concept of <i>sharaf </i>or <i>fadīha </i>(social honour or dishonour) – a-common-denominator ideology which each of the texts seeks to reflect and deconstruct. Exploring the agency which each of the authors has constructed for her heroine’s defiance, evasion, or subversion of patriarchal authority, this study asserts that some pre-oil Kuwaiti women have been actively resistant to male domination, and that they have worked for social change.

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The research undertaken in this thesis focuses on the reception by different groups of readers in both the Arab and Western worlds of four novels written by Saudi authors: Abdo Khal’s Tarmī bi-sharar… (Throwing Sparks), Raja Alem’s Ṭawq al-Ḥamām (The Dove’s Necklace), Rajaa Alsanea’s Banāt al-riyāḍ (Girls of Riyadh) and Yousef al-Mohaimeed’s Fikhākh al-Rā’iḥa (Wolves of the Crescent Moon). In order to analyse this critical discourse, this study draws on Fish’s (1980) concept of ‘interpretive communities’, combining this with a detailed examination of the socio-cultural and ideological contexts that shaped the reception of these works. This thesis is divided into eight chapters. Chapter one elaborates the research background, the aims of the study, its significance and the research questions that both motivate and structure this thesis. Chapter Two provides a detailed account of available research and theories related to the Saudi novel and the reception theory as well as the data used and the methodology applied. Chapter Three discusses the political, social and cultural contexts that have shaped the Saudi literary space, detailing how these are reflected in the Saudi novel and the extent to which they have affected its development. Chapter Four highlights the important factors that have significantly affected the status and reception of the contemporary Saudi novel. Chapters five and six examine the reception of these four contemporary Saudi novels by different groups of Arab readers, focusing on two main groups of readers and readings: Arab journalists, both Saudi and non-Saudi (simplistic readings); and Arab literary critics, both Saudi and non-Saudi (professional readings). Chapter seven explores how these four Saudi novels have attracted the attention of Anglophone journalists and academics following their translation into English. It argues that the cultural experiences of Anglophone readers differ from those of the original target audience, which influences the act of textual interpretation.

The idea behind this research is motivated primarily by pronouncements made by (co)producers of English translations of modern Arabic fiction concerning the untranslatability of ‘Arabic’ and its status as a ‘controversial’ language, which presents a ‘hurdle’ in the way of the cultural and literary transfer of modern Arabic works of fiction to English. Is it the Arabic language alone that conditions or circumscribes the translation activity of modern Arabic fiction into English, or are there other socio-cultural and historico-political factors that influence the volume of such activity? In an attempt to answer questions such as the above and to understand and evaluate the extent to which such polemic comments are true, this thesis traces the socio-historical trajectory of the field of modern Arabic fiction into English throughout its phases of development. It sets out to identify and investigate the determinants that condition or circumscribe the translation of modern Arabic fiction into English. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social practice and its heuristic concepts, to include field, capital, homology and (dis)position, the English translation activity of modern Arabic fiction is examined as a socially constructed and constructing practice and the related individuals and institutions are investigated as socially regulated and regulating agents. The study’s aim is to analyse and interpret the diverse range of practices in this field of cultural production. To guide the analysis of this thesis, English translations of modern Arabic fiction, published between 1908 and 2014, are compiled and analysed both statistically and sociologically. They are combined with historical and archival materials, including several exchanges between various translatorial agents that have not been previously examined. Various factors informing, conforming and/or transforming the field of modern Arabic fiction in English translation are identified and analysed, with specific attention to their impact on the field’s structure and the positions available in it, the capital at stake, the agents involved, the dynamics of production and the volume of activity within the field. In the process of mapping out the field of modern Arabic fiction in English translation, the thesis redraws the boundaries of the field and suggests alternative dates to, as well as a different structure from, the phases identified by Altoma (2005). It also investigates several socio-cultural and historico-political factors that are not mentioned in Khalifa and Elgindy (2014) or other related studies. The retranslations of Naguib Mahfouz’s most controversial novel, ‘Awlād Ḥāratinā, are thoroughly examined as a case study in order to provide further insights into how socio-cultural and historico-political forces function in concert within the field of modern Arabic fiction in English translation. Particular focus is given to how these forces impact the field and its activities—fostering or subverting its outlook—and how they mediate the relationships between its agents and other intersecting fields. Through an in-depth analysis of paratextual elements, the thesis illuminates how (re)translations can be used as a tool to claim distinction in the field of translation and exposes the struggle between its agents. The findings have implications for the fields of translation studies in general, and modern Arabic literature/fiction translation and its publishing trends in particular. They demonstrate that a progression in the production and publishing of translations has taken place since 1908. This is in opposition to the prevailing belief that the flow of English translations of modern Arabic works of fiction has been primarily hindered by the Arabic language. However, there have been fluctuations in the velocity and volume of the translation flow. These fluctuations correspond to various internal and external socio-cultural and historico-political forces that affected the translation production and consumption and, consequently, the structure of the field and its agents’ practices. The evidence presented suggests that, instead of focusing on the literary value of a work, several modern Arabic works of fiction were translated because of their sociological/anthropological significance. This mediated and framed, to a great extent, the way the Arab world was perceived by and promoted in the Anglophone world. Given this finding, translations of modern Arabic fiction should always be perceived within, and not in isolation from, the larger context of their production, circulation and reception, especially in the case of English translations.

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