The literary works of Saudi women have not long been recognised as an individual culture. This study aims to introduce Saudi women's novels to a wider audience. Arab, English and other readers need to examine how much Saudi women have achieved in this genre. Women and their novels have developed with the movement of the wider Saudi society; women have achieved different rates of progress in terms of themes and style. The purpose of this study is to look at Saudi women's novels as the most important literary genre through which women can express their views and desires. Many questions are raised throughout the study, some refer to culture and others to genre. The study aims to examine women's novels, what they have written about and what they have achieved. Culturally, the study covers three aspects: women as gender, the novel as a literary genre and the developing culture of Saudi society. The thesis consists of six chapters. Chapter One gives an account of existing works related to the topic, giving a brief historical account of the Saudi women's movement and examining different aspects of Saudi women's literature, in particular the novel and how it has moved forward as women's position in society has developed. From Chapter Two to Chapter Five, the study deals with the women novelists' works chronologically, examining them in terms of the most important cultural and literary phenomena. Thus, Chapter Two sheds light on the beginnings of women's fiction in Saudi literature and covers the period from 1960-1980. It examines the novels of the liberal writers Samira Khdshugji and Hudä al-Rashid. Chapter Three deals with the period from 1980 to the Second Gulf War in 1991, when the novel began its rise in status in Saudi literature, examining some of the technical styles and themes of two of the best Saudi women novelists, Safiyya `Anbar and Amal Shatä. Chapter Four covers the same period and examines how the novels of Bahiyya Bü Subayt and Raja' `Alim deal with the common cultural phenomena of the period, in particular so-called Islamic literature and modernism. Chapter Five deals with women novelists since 1991. It outlines the changes in Saudi society since the Second Gulf War and September 11th (9/11), and the parallel developments in Saudi literature up to the year 2002, as young novelists from a new generation came up with new ideas. Chapter Six gives a general conclusion to this thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:496392 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Al-Wahhabi, Abd Al-Rahman Muhammad |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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