لا شكّ في أنه من غير الممكن أن نتحدث عن أعماق حياة الإنسان من دون اعتبار الفتوحات المعرفية والملاحظات المدهشة التي أنجزتها كشوفات التحليل النفسي وعلم النفس التحليلي عند فرويد ويونغ وغيرهما من علماء النفس. وإذا كان هذا صحيحاً بشكل عام، فإنّه ولا ريب مثار اهتمام كبير حين يتعلق الأمر بالإبداعات الإنسانية من فنون وآداب وغير ذلك. ولكن الأكثر إثارة هو حين يلحظ المبدع عمل اللاوعي، الفردي والجمعي، بغض النظر عن التسمية التي قد يطلقها عليه: قوى الحياة، إرادة الكون، رسائل الوجود، إلى آخره. ولعلّه من الصواب القول إنّ هذا الوعي لما هو متعالٍ أو غير واعٍ أو فائق للعاديّ يترافق بإدراك للذات وتفرّدها وبتلمّس دورها التاريخي بوصفها شخصية غائيّة وعلاقتها بالزمان والمكان ليست عشوائية أو اعتباطية. هكذا إذن ينظر الإنسان إلى نفسه من منظور تاريخيّ، أي من زاوية حدس المعنى والغاية والرسالة.
بهذا المعنى تبرز إشارات اللاوعي، الفردي والجمعي/الكوني، في فصول عديدة من حياة الروائي والناقد والكاتب الكبير جبرا إبراهيم جبرا، ويبرز وعيه الشخصي لكثير من هذه الإشارات، والتي سنتناولها في ضوء بعض المفاهيم والتصوّرات والتجارب الشخصية التي كشفها عالم النفس التحليلي السويسري كارل غوستاف يونغ.
This research deals with Anorexia nervosa disorder in the novel ʾIjāṣat Mīlā, that portrays the impact of modern-day materialism and its effect on the emerging and spreading of some disorders to such an extent that it has become a phenomenon needing investigation. Because of a number of social and materialistic factors, this disorder deeply affects young people, who easily fall under the influence of social media.
This research examines both the background of the disorder and the suffering that the main character of the novel goes through. It further investigates the effects of social media platforms and fora on young people, together with the role of literature in portraying the damages caused by their usage. The novel is examined through critical cultural theory, which searches for the hidden cultural significance of the phenomenon. The result of the study shows that ʾIjāṣat Mīlā can be seen as a sphere, comprising all the social changes that communication technology causes in the new generations.
This study aims at (reading and) analysing a selection of children's picture books stories within the critical framework of ecocriticism. The book series is entitled Environmental Preservation Series, Endangered Animals and comprises ten stories written by Ghassan Shibārū.The research relies on the theoretical foundations outlined by Lawrence Buell in his The Environmental Imagination. The study highlighted how this series of stories focus on scientific topics related to the environmental risks the planet is exposed to now, such as global warming, indiscriminate hunting and poaching, urban expansion, the use of chemical pesticides, and air, water and environmental pollution caused by the release of waste, gases, and oil. The stories present such environmental issues in a simple narrative form within the structure of the selected picture books. The research concluded that the theoretical framework of ecocriticism principles is suitable for these texts and that children's literature can contribute greatly to the building of the child's cultural literacy in relation to the environment and its possible dangers.
يتأثّر الأدب عادةً بمتغيرات الواقع التي تفرزها مرحلة مضطربة سياسيّاً وتاريخيّاً، ويتمثّل هذا التأثّر في التشكيل الفنّي والدلالي للعمل الأدبي، ولعلّ هذا المبدأ، قد عاد بقوة إلى الدراسات النقدية التي خرجت من تأثيرات المذهب البنيوي الوصفي، ونظرتْ إلى الأدب على أنه نتاج علاقة مثمرة ودالة بين الفن والتاريخ. ولأنّ أدب الشتات قد كُتبَ في ظلّ ظروف غير طبيعيّة سياسياً واجتماعياً، ونشأ في محيطٍ آخر يحتوي على مشكلات عديدة تواجه الأدب من جهة والإنسان المنفي من جهة أخرى، فإن هذا النوع من الأدب اكتسب مزايا في التشكيل الفنيّ والمضموني، يحاول هذا البحث أن يتناولها من خلال دراسة رواية "الإسكندرية 2050، وهي رواية غنية بأحداثها وشخصياتها وأفكارها، فهي تتيح إمكانية قراءات متعددة، لما تحتويه من موضوعات متنوعة ومتشابكة مع بعضها بطريقة فنية لتشكّل الهيكل الفني للرواية.
This research deals with Anorexia nervosa disorder in the novel ʾIjāṣat Mīlā, which portrays the impact of modern-day materialism and its effect on the emerging and spreading of some disorders to such an extent that it has become a phenomenon needing investigation. Because of a number of social and materialistic factors, this disorder deeply affects young people, who easily fall under the influence of social media. This research examines both the background of the disorder and the suffering that the main character of the novel goes through. It further investigates the effects of social media platforms and fora on young people, together with the role of literature in portraying the damages caused by their usage. The novel is examined through critical cultural theory, which searches for the hidden cultural significance of the phenomenon. The result of the study shows that ʾIjāṣat Mīlā can be seen as a sphere, comprising all the social changes that communication technology causes in the new generations.
كانت الدلالة موضوعاً خصباً وحقلاً مثيراً للاهتمام في دراسات اللغويين والفلاسفة، وصارت هدفاً لكل تلك الدراسات لارتباطها بنظريات الإدراك والمعرفة. لقد ارتبطت الدلالة في الدراسات اللسانية الحديثة بنظريات عديدة، وسوف يركز بحثي على النظرية السياقية كما وضع جذورها قديماً، اللغويون والبلاغيون العرب كعبد القاهر الجرجاني، وكما أرسى مبادئها في العصر الحديث العالم البريطاني فيرث بنظرية أطلق عليها: النظرية السياقية، والتي أخرجت الدلالة من مجالها النحوي التركيبي إلى مجالات أكثر سعة من ذلك التركيب على الرغم من أهميته التي لن نتغافل عنها بالتأكيد. سأتناول في هذا البحث السياق بأنواعه المختلفة التي حددها اللغويون مثل: أحمد مختار عمر وتمّام حسّان وأحمد محمد قدور: السياق اللغوي، والسياق العاطفي، والسياق الثقافي، وسياق الموقف، والوظيفة التي تؤديها هذه السياقات لتشكيل دلالة الكلام، وسوف أقوم بفحص تلك المستويات السياقية من خلال تمثلاتها في البناء اللساني لقصيدة: النائمة في الشارع، لنازك الملائكة.
Lärarhandledning i arabisk didaktik – litteratur, grammatik och bedömning
Boken är ett läromedel avsett för modersmålslärare i arabiska och består av åtta kapitel som behandlar didaktiska frågor rörande grammatik och litteraturundervisning samt bedömning.
Cats are and have always been a constant presence in the Arabic culture: from Ancient Egypt to the pre-Islamic era, in the Islamic tradition and even in proverbs, cats have always played a conspicuous role. The traditional Arabic significance of cats is also clearly reflected in contemporary Arabic children’s literature, and a large number of tales for children are featuring cats in a variety of roles. However, how are cats portrayed and what do they stand for in these stories? Scope of this paper is the representation of cats and their symbolism in contemporary Arabic children’s literature. A brief introduction covers the role of cats in the Arabic culture in very general terms, followed by an overview of the genre of contemporary Arabic children’s literature that accounts for its mostly educational, didactic character and its latest trends. The central part of this paper presents and analyses a number of Arabic picture books, authored by Arabic writers and illustrated by Arabic artists, where cats are protagonists, either as embodiments of human traits or as companions of human beings. The stories are discussed in terms of their symbolism and their themes.
Machine translation, and specifically Google Translate, is becoming a favourite tool for language learners. As it is freely available across a variety of platforms for both desktop and mobile devices, students tend to rely on it excessively for solving their course assignments, which is ultimately detrimental to their language learning. However, the functionalities of machine translation can be exploited proactively within the curriculum and activities involving its use can be included in a course in order to increase language awareness and ultimately language learning. This paper is a contribution to the research field of machine translation in language pedagogy and reports the results of an empirical study conducted on students of an Arabic beginners course at a Swedish University. The study aimed at making the most of the students’ attitude of relying on Google Translate, while at the same time taking advantage of GT’s capabilities and limitations as a tool for language learning. A brief introduction covers machine translation and the reasons for GT inconsistencies with translating Arabic. This paper then presents two assignments given to the students at two separate moments of the term, accounting for their scope and execution. An analysis of the results follows, highlighting the students’ performance and reflections on the advantages and disadvantages of GT.
During the first two decades of the 21st century an increasing amount of narratives termed as Arabic dystopian fiction appeared on the Arabic literary scene, with a greater part authored by Egyptian writers. However, what characterises/marks a work as a dystopia? This paper investigates the dystopian nature of a selection of Egyptian literary works within the frame of the dystopian narrative tradition. The article begins by introducing the features of the traditional literary dystopias as they will be used in the analysis. It then gives a brief overview of the development of the genre in the Arabic literature. The discussion that follows highlights common elements and identifies specific themes in six Egyptian novels selected for the analysis, thereby highlighting differences and similarities between them and the traditional Western dystopias. The article calls for a categorisation of Arabic dystopian narrative that takes into consideration social, political, historical and cultural factors specific for the Arabic in general, and Egyptian in particular, literary field.
Climate change has been attracting increasing attention as one of the most significant consequences of the anthropogenic global warming and fictional narratives have increasingly been involved in engaging human imagination on the topic of climate change. Climate fiction, or cli-fi, is the umbrella term that designates fiction with climate change as its main theme. Climate fiction has been primarily published in English so far and narratives specifically problematising anthropogenic climate change are still quite rare in the Arabic literary landscape. In this regard, the novel 2022 by the Lebanese author Ghassān Shibārū constitutes an interesting case, given that it is authored in Arabic but displays several of the characteristics typical of the cli-fi genre. This paper aims at providing an analysis of Shibārū’s novel 2022 as representative of Arabic climate fiction. The main features of the climate fiction genre and its relationship to the scholarship of ecocriticism are first outlined. An overview of the environment as a theme in Arabic literature and Arabic literary studies then follows. The paper subsequently presents the concept of ecological literacy, which constitutes the theoretical framework for the analysis of the characters in the novel. After a synopsis of the plot, the characters are analysed and discussed and the novel itself is examined as instance of climate fiction as intended by the Anglophone definition of the genre. The authors argue that the purpose of the novel is didactic, since, rather than narrating a fictional story, the novel exploits a fictional story in order to spread awareness of global warming and climate change.
Catrin Gersdorf and Sylvia Meyer (2006) state that ecocriticism is a methodology which investigates different ways to contextualise nature and its function ideologically, aesthetically and ethically in literary texts. Through a close reading of three novels by the Syrian authors Fāris Zarzūr, ‘Abd al-Salām al-‘Ujaylī and Jān Aliksān this paper will investigate how they, in their literary texts, engage with one of the biggest human interventions in the natural life of Syria, namely the dams built along the Euphrates. By an examination of the characters’ relationship with the river – and later the dams and their drowned villages, the paper will show that the novelists make use of nature and its destruction to discuss ideological stands as well as ethical dilemmas. Although the three novelists reach different conclusions, they all aesthetically utilise water and its innate force which is forcibly tamed, to examine interaction between humans and nature, tradition and modernity, and individuals and the state apparatus.
What can novels tell us about masculinity in Syria? In this book, Lovisa Berg explores over 20 Syrian novels covering the last 50 years of the 20th century. Uniquely, she examines only female writers in order to gauge the changing ways in which Syrian women perceived the function of masculinity, and the impact certain attitudes towards masculinity have on men, women, children and Syrian society, from a female perspective. The works of writers from Kulit Khuri to Usayma Darwish are analysed to explore changing attitudes to gender in Syria and the Middle East, as well as the political upheavals within the country and region. We see the idealistically portrayed men in the novels of female authors in the 1950s give way in time to a more critical depictions of patriarchy. Above all, we see through the use of novels a plethora of critiques of masculine hegemony in Syrian society, the authors of which are able with the use of fiction to reorganise and question maleness in a way denied to them in reality. This book will be of interest to scholars of Contemporary Syrian and Arabic Literature, Masculinity Studies and Women's Studies.
This article discusses the connection between power and sexual activity as seen in the novel Rā’iḥat al-qirfah (The Scent of Cinnamon) by the Syrian author Samar Yazbik. It addresses how the fictional society constructed in the novel sees sexual prowess as an instrument of power and how the author uses this connection to analyse and critique the power structures found in Syrian society. This is done through all the characters but in particular through the development of ‘Alyā, who transgresses gender norms and adopts what is coded male sexual behaviour in an attempt to obtain power. The article argues that her actions at the same time validate and violate the gender order since not only do they show that male sexual performance is linked to power, but also that a female can perform the same actions. Alyā’s conduct further illustrates the mechanisms of power structures built on fear and violence as found in the novel.
Eyelight, in the eyes of a human portrayed on film, is a cinematographic means to augment the vividness of expressed emotions. This is used by both cinematographers and stills photographers, and it is also expressed in Anglo-Saxon, Arabic, and Japanese literatures. Here, the effect of using eyelight in the cornea of the human eye on film is examined by eye-tracking individuals on a Swedish university campus, in order to study their perceptual responses to film characters, with, or without, a glimpse of light in their eyes. The participants’ perceived capacity to discern the emotional states of the film characters was also tested. Eye-tracking data were analysed for entry time, fixation time, dwell time, hit ratio and revisitors, while emotional decoding was captured through a self-report survey, and by open questions. Our results demonstrated that film viewers’ attention is captured 49% faster, and 11% less time is used per fixation to film characters’ eyes, when eyelight is used. In addition, 58% of our participants claimed that emotions were easy to discern from eyes in the eyelight condition, whereas only 36% claimed that emotions were easy to discern under the no-eyelight condition. Although our results concern the subjective impression of one’s ability to discern the emotions of each film character, they offer preliminary support for the idea of using eyelight to enhance emotional communication in film and stills photography.
This chapter explores relationships between student voice and translanguaging pedagogy in adult education for immigrant L2-learners with minimal or no prior schooling. Material collected over the course of three terms through classroom observations was used. Even though the students in this study do not challenge neither the teacher nor the teaching, they – along with the teachers – do challenge the monolingual norm that prevails in Swedish schools by claiming their voice and positioning themselves with their multilingual competence. We conclude that the use of translanguaging pedagogy gave students voice to express their views and relate the teaching to their experiences, both from their everyday lives in Sweden and from their earlier lives. The way that teachers not only gave room for the use of diverse languages but also themselves took interest in and engaged themselves in learning students’ various languages was positive for students’ engagement and their development of multilingual skills.