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Thèse--Paris. / Bibliography: p. xi-xxii.

No description available.

Originally presented as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.--Jāmiʻat al-Qiddīs Yūsuf, Beirut). / Includes bibliographical references (p. 433-440) and index.

Inaug.-diss.--Heidelberg. / Arabic text in Hebrew characters, with German translation. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Born in Damascus in 1931 Zakariyyā Tāmir is widely considered one of the most significant figures in the contemporary literary scene of Syria and the wider Middle East. This thesis addresses his literary trajectory and the ways in which representations of masculinity and femininity have changed throughout his career by situating the stylistic and thematic transformations in the context of major historical and political events in Syria and the region. Applying an approach that relates literary transformations to a rapidly changing political context, the research elucidates how the changing configurations of gender roles in Tāmir’s works can be understood in the context of what Kamal Abu- Deeb has described as a process of political and ideological fragmentation affecting the Arab East since the mid-1970s. Dividing Tāmir’s works into two periods (1958-1978 and 1994-2014) to connect them to the different historical conditions in which they appeared, this study examines the significance of masculinity, patriarchy, sexuality and female identity in relation to the collapse of the totalising discourse of modernity. The research scrutinises the ways in which this process has engendered a multiplication of voices and roles in his short stories. Employing Connel’s theory of hegemonic masculinity the study addresses the ways in which the mutually informing nature of masculinities and femininities in Tāmir’s stories channels compliance and/or subversion to patriarchy and patriarchal authoritarianism. In the first part, this dissertation puts into conversation Tāmir’s early works written in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the modernist trend. The organic relationship Arabic literature enjoyed with the project of national liberation is reflected in the fundamentally male-centred nature of the stories, leaving female characters at the margins of a progressive and existentialist struggle for emancipation from authoritarianism, patriarchy, religious tradition and exploitation. While examples from the very early stories show the significant presence of a genuine concern with the sexual dimension of female characters, episodes expressing a more openly political stance also exhibit a tendency to instrumentalise the female body in order to denounce the pervasiveness of the authoritarian state. The second part, devoted to the analysis of Tāmir’s latest works published since his self-imposed exile to the UK, looks at the emergence of prominent female characters openly expressing their sexual desire, simultaneously assessing their subjectivity and acting as decisive actors that shape the male protagonists’ masculinity. The analysis reveals how the works of this period retain a significant political charge, and brings together the appearance of original female characters and the correlated emergence of weak model of masculinity. In addition, stories typified by pessimism, as well as by extensive resorting to elements of Arab popular tradition, serve as illustrations of a peculiar form of Arab postmodernism which has appeared in Tāmir’s stories lately.

In the year 1934 a coterie of young men launched the literary magazine Al-Fajr and marked the beginning of the first literarily conscious movement in the Sudan. Both movement and initiators have come to be known by the name of the magazine itself. In this thesis the first attempt to study the Al-Fajr group (or movement) has been made. The study investigates the general and special circumstances in which the Group were nurtured, the private gatherings which led to their appearance and the value of their contribution to modern Arabic literature, with particular reference to their critical and poetic works. In chapter one a survey of the Sudanese literary heritage, including popular and classical literature to the appearance of the Al-Fajr group, has been carried out. This chapter provides the necessary literary background to the Al-Fajr movement. Chapter two traces the literary origins of the Group and describes the evolutionary factors which led to their appearance. Chapter three is devoted to a description of the magazine Al-Fajr; its objective and policy, its collection and the general features of its writings. In chapter four the literary ideas of the Group have been examined and the theoretical and practical aspects of their criticism have been studied. The final chapter deals with the poetry of the Group. It attempts to analyse the content of this poetry, study its form and assess its value in terms of innovation and rejuvenation. The appendix is supplementary to the final chapter. It contains the Arabic text of the poems which have been studied in this chapter.

This thesis is an investigation into the aesthetic and political functions of “rumor” in modern Egypt. While previous studies have emphasized the formal or structural features of the genre, I seek to analyze the discursive, political and technological contexts that contribute to its persistence as such a powerful and ambivalent way of imagining speech. The scope of my analysis is a collection of texts culled from the tradition of Arabic letters in Egypt, beginning with early works of historiography (16th century), and into the political journals, newspapers, and novels of the 20th century, as well as the blogs, search engines and internet forums of the 21st century. I argue that specific discourses and imaginings of the rumor – contingent and mutable – emerged as an inseparable feature of the elite author’s textual encounter with the masses. Anxieties over the agency of various mass subjects – the urban crowd, the citizenry, and others – have contributed to the ways in which different writers reify speech. The final chapters of my thesis turn to focus on rumors about the death of President Husni Mubarak, in order to analyze the role the genre plays in contests over national political authority. Here, the rumor is an index of fears, passions, fantasies and other narratives that the writers both draw on and contribute to. Foregrounding these associations becomes a powerful aesthetic and affective process that allows actors to "fix" - solidify and treat - the agency and subjectivity of others. / text

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Between 1900 and 1970 seven different versions of Sophocles’ play Oedipus Tyrannos were performed or published in Arabic in Egypt. This thesis looks at the first 71 years’ history of this iconic Greek tragedy in Arabic and the ways it can be used to think through the cultural debates of the period. The long history of contact between Greece and Egypt and the 19th and 20th century interpretations of this history can be used to look at different models of colonial and post-colonial cultural interaction. Classicism offered Egyptian writers a constructive way of looking at their cultural identity and contemporary world – a way which takes in to account the legacies of colonialism but also engages Greek literature to create their own models of nationhood. Following the history of performance and adaptation of the play throughout the 20th century, this thesis offers close readings of the most prominent adaptations of Oedipus, particularly those of Farah Antun (whose text was used for Actor-Director George Abyad’s first version of the play in 1912), Tawfiq al-Hakim (1949), Ali Ahmed Bakathir (1949) and Ali Salem (1970). Using performance and translation theory, I show how performance of translated plays like Oedipus was a crucial but complex part of the formation of an Egyptian dramatic tradition through the dynamic interaction of diverse views of what the theatre should be, using, for instance, the role of singing in turn of the century drama. This thesis also revisits and revises misconceptions about the relationship between Islam and theatre. In addition to examining Egyptian Oedipus’ 19th and 20th century context, I also stress the contribution of performance and adaptation to readings of the original text. In particular, these versions of Oedipus ask questions about monarchical rule and democracy that form one link between this classical play and 20th century Egypt. Through its interdisciplinary approach as well as the close readings it offers, this thesis aims to make valuable contributions to the fields of Arabic Theatre Studies and Classical Reception in Colonial and Post-Colonial contexts as well as Performance and Translation Theory.