Scholarship on the Arabic novel often approaches it in light of questions of national consciousness, identity formation and contact with the West. This study relates the traditional fictional narrative of individual self-development found in biographical subgenres of the novel such as the Bildungsroman, autobiographical and confessional novels with these scholarly enterprises. It explores how biographical forms, as found in the post-1967 Arabic novel, have reflected an individualistic worldview that began as a reaction to certain collectivist ideas inherited from a previous generations of writers and intellectuals. The individualism of biographical forms is shown to be a reaction to the literary conventions associated with the themes of national identity and the Western encounter. The New Sensibility movement that evolved during the period that the study covers is analysed in relation to various Arabic texts from eight countries. Theories of intertextuality provide the interpretive tools to discuss the links between those novels and the changes in genres over time. Gérard Genette’s concept of hypertextuality is one of such tools used to analyse the relationship between the contemporary texts and their predecessors, and Bakhtin’s ideas on utterances and speech genres allow me to interpret the implied writers’ views on the values associated with the literary convention in which they are participating. I use three prototypical narratives to summarise the elements of the established literary conventions and the presuppositions of the writers and readers. The study focuses on two recurrent themes in the contemporary biographical novel; political activism and immigration. It shows how these two topics were developed literary codes that contemporary writers gave new significations. In prototypical narratives, they were literary vehicles for imagining a unified community, and in the late twentieth century they transformed into narratives of self-discovery and individualistic emphasis on uniqueness and agency. By focusing on certain attributes of the biographical form, such as the spontaneous desire of the individual and the persistent motif of the double, I show how this particular subgenre of the novel was used to disturb the collectivist ideologies and stable speech genres that had become prevalent by the latter half of the twentieth century.

This thesis seeks to investigate cultural translation procedures in four novels of Ibrāhīm al-Kawnī by Arabic-English translators. It also aims to assess to what extent the style and culture of the original work has been conveyed and preserved. In other words, it focuses on the original language, the language of the author and the source text. The aim is to allow the target reader to understand as much as possible of the content of the source text. Furthermore, the work considers translation equivalence theory as a framework within which several translations of the meaning of cultural terms have been analytically evaluated. The researcher selected 97 translated cultural words, phrases and identified various cultural and linguistic problems in their translation.

This thesis is based on the edition of Ibn Bätish's work, Ghäyat al-Wasä'il ilä Ma'rifat al-Awä'il. The thesis therefore falls into two main parts: introduction and Arabic text. The introduction consists of four chapters. The first chapter is devoted to writings on the subject of Awä'il before Ibn Bätish. These contributions are traced from the earliest stages up to the time of Ibn Bätish. There is a detailed survey of these writings and writers together with studies of those works which have fortunately survived. The second chapter deals mainly with Ibn Batish's biography. It is meant to show the place of the man within Arab culture and particularly that of his own time. The third chapter is concerned mainly with Ibn Bätish's works in general. This chapter is an attempt to find out the identity and value of each of his books, most of which have unfortunately been lost. It appears, however, that Ibn Bätish in his writings covers different aspects of Arabic literature. Most of his interest is of a biographical and geographical nature and he is also very interested in Arabic genealogy. The fourth chapter is devoted to Ibn Bätish's work Ghäyat al- Wasä'il, with special attention being given to its unique system and its sources of references, most of which are lost. This adds much value to the work which in itself seems to be the most comprehensive work of Awa'il extant. At the end of this chapter there is a full description of the three manuscripts of the Ghaya on which the edition of the Arabic text is based.

This thesis is concerned with the rise and development of early Arabic drama, from the year 1847 when Marun an-Naqqash wrote and produced the first play in Arabic to the year 1900 when Ahmad Abu Khalil al--Qabbani retired. It is a critical and analytical study of the works of four pioneering dramatists whose works are considered landmarks in the history of drama in Arabic. This study is mainly devoted to the art of drama as a literary genre* The emphasis is laid on the extant works of these writers, rather than on the annals of the Arab theatre or the activities and formation of diverse troupes. It consists of seven chapters. Chapter I takes the form of-an introduction and deals with the phenomenon of the absence of drama from Arab culture. It questions the various factors that led to this absence and discusses the conditions that later assisted the emergence of this art. Chapter II deals with the embryonic and indigenous forms of drama in Arabic culture and how the link between these primitive forms and the art of drama in Arabic was broken. Chapter III considers the works of the first-Arab playwright, Marun an-Naqqash. The works of this pioneer are studied in order to determine the extent of his indebtedness to foreign and local influences. Chapter IV is devoted to the works left by Syria's first dramatist, ash-Shaikh Ahmad Abu Khalll al-Qabbani. These are examined and evaluated by comparing them with their foreign originals. Chapter V studies the experiments of Yacqu-b Sann-Ur-, Egypt's pioneering dramatist who laid the basis of social critical comedy. His attitude on the question of the correct medium of expression for drama and his insistence on the use of the colloquial language led to the emergence of the problem of diglossia in Arabic drama. Chapter VI discusses the works of Muhammad cUthmýn Jalal and the trend of Egyptianisation initiated by him. Jalal's pieces are compared with their original sources, mainly French classical drama. In Chapter VII, the concluding remarks derived from this study of early Arabic drama are set down. Observations about the works of the early Arab dramatists and their relationship with the drama of the West are pointed out

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The dialogue between tradition and modernity has had an ambivalent impact on the intellectuals and, in particular, the dramatists of the Arab world. This thesis sets out to examine taw~If al-tudith (employing tradition) in a modem «Ontext, which Syrian playwrights have regarded as an issue that is central to their work. The dramatic phenomena from alturath (tradition) vary greatly, and they have been even more varied when applied in a modem context in the form of Western-style plays. But the idealistic search by Syrian dramatists to find or create their 'authentic' Arabic theatre has not been a simple task. In order to reach an understanding of the main thesis and attempt to draw any conclusions, a selection of six Syrian playwrights has been chosen to represent this debate. The choice of these six playwrights has been determined by their manifest influence on the advancement and development of Syrian theatre through the publication and performances of their plays and through their extensive articles and books published on Arabic theatre in general and Syrian theatre in particular.

This thesis has three goals: to identify patterns of repetition in the Arab writers Taha Hussein’s and Muhammad al-Muwaylihi’s texts, their shift in the English translations, and to establish the translation strategies used in this area. The empirical base material for this study consists of a three-part autobiography <i>(al-Ayyaam,</i> ‘The Days’) and a narrative fiction (<i>Hadiith ‘Isaa ibn Hishaam, ‘</i>Isa ibn Hisham’s Tale’). As a first step Taha Hussein and Muhammad al-Muwaylihi along with their texts are presented and criteria for selecting research material discussed. Secondly, the notion of repetition is explored from the perspective of linguistic and cultural norms, and issues related to the norm theories discussed. Lastly, a comparative analysis is carried out in five chapters to see how instances of repetition are rendered in the English translations. The findings show that Arabic texts utilise repetitive patterns for text-building and rhetorical purposes. These patterns are manifested, on all levels, in phonological, morphological and lexical repetition, lexical doublets paraphrase, parallelism and chiasmus. A <i>stereoscopic</i> type of lexical doublet cements textual cohesion and coherence by signalling <i>complex meaning </i>that goes beyond the confines of the doublet. Patterns of repetition are shifted in the English translations and various translation strategies are applied, the most common being <i>grammatical transposition</i> and <i>reduction.</i> A statistical assessment of the translation of lexical doublets in three samples is done. The samples are about 2500 words each and randomly selected from the autobiography’s three parts. The figures suggest that one translator (Part One) adopts a source text-oriented strategy versus a shifting strategy preferred by the other two. This is a useful indicator of the direction of the translations, towards either adequacy or acceptability.

This thesis is connected with the life and works of Diya'-ad-Din b. al-Athir, an Arab rhetorician of the 6th/7th century A.D. It is divided into two parts, the first of which has exploited all available sources in order to sketch a brief biography of this scholar. A list of works attributed to him is given, together with arguments which suggest whether these attributions are correct or false. A brief description of the contents of these works is also given. The second part of the thesis provides an analysis of Diya'-ad-Din's theory of rhetoric based on two works, al-Mathal as-Sa'ir and al-Jami' al-Kabir. The four chapters in this part each deal with a topic of discussion in which Diya'-ad-Din's own treatment is compared to that of other rhetoricians, whenever he appears to differ from them. Chapter Three deals with the foundations of rhetoric, and Chapter Four with verbal composition connected with the single word, Chapter Five with verbal composition connected with compound expressions, and Chapter Six deals with aspects of composition relating to signification. Finally, a brief conclusion attempts to assess Diya'-ad-Din's place among Arabic rhetoricians and tries to account for the popularity of the Mathal as-Sa'ir.

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