A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) in Literary and Critical Studies at The World Islamic Sciences and Education University
By: Wafa Motawe Saeed Jabour
Supervisor: Prof. Ibraheem Al-Kofahi
ABSTRACT
This study aims to examine the manifestations of commitment in the poems of Jordanian poets and the ways they addressed political, national, social, and humanitarian issues that impacted the Arab region between 2010 and 2025. It also examines several Aesthetic Phenomena that emerged in their poetry. This study consists of an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion. The researcher adopted a descriptive and analytical approach, examining a group of committed poetic texts through investigation and critical analysis to draw conclusions related to the dimensions of this phenomenon in Jordanian poetry during the study period, which coincided with a significant number of political and social events.
Perhaps the most prominent conclusion of the study is that the poet's ability to depict the collective concerns surrounding his nation defines commitment. Thus, commitment is the objective equivalent of the pulse of the group. Accordingly, images of commitment have varied in Jordanian poetry, and a group of artistic phenomena have emerged that have provided poems with aesthetic and semantic spaces, with variations in style from one poet to another, consistent with the thematic structure of the poem.
LOST IDENTITIES AND DISTORTED HOPES: FICTIONAL NARRATIVES OF THE ARAB SPRING
By: Hanane Bouchebouche
Supervisor: Dr. Hala Abdul-Haleem Abu Taleb
The Arab World witnessed several political uprisings that changed and are still changing the history of certain countries. These events provided the literary scene with new materials and themes to be discussed and represented in fiction. In this research, I aim to explore one of the most significant postcolonial concepts: identity loss, and expose the aspirations, dreams, and pains of fictional characters who found themselves trapped in such conditions during or after the Arab Spring. For this purpose, I will explore fictional works from Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria, tracing the protagonist's identity crisis and analyzing it from a postcolonial perspective. In doing so, a special focus will be given to five post-Arab Spring novels that depict the aftermath of the Arab Spring in the countries mentioned above. The political upheavals occurring in these areas left lasting scars on the lives of their inhabitants, which are reflected in the selected texts. This study argues that identity crises and the distortion of people's hopes were among the primary outcomes of the political uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. I will shed light on events surrounding the loss of identity in: Layla Alammar's Silence is a Sense (2021), Khalid Khalifa's Death is a Hard Work (2019) (Syria), Omar Robert Hamilton's The City Always Wins (2017), Basma Abdel Aziz's The Queue (2016) (Egypt), Yamen Manai's The Ardent Swarm (2021) (Tunisia). These literary works will be analyzed from a postcolonial perspective, with a focus on the notions of oppression, exile, displacement, and marginalization, as they played a significant role in the process of Identity loss.
Semiotic Passion in the Novels of Sinan Anton
By: Alla Ahmad Khalil
Supervisors: Dr.Badeeah Alhashemi
ABSTRACT
This study aims to analyze the selected novels of Sinan Antoun, to reach the most critical controlling passions, and to study the way passions and emotions work and manifest themselves in the narrative discourse, and how these passions are formed, by applying the procedural tools of semiotics of passions, while relying on a theoretical presentation of the roots of semiotics, and how the semiotics of passions were born from the womb of the semiotics of the work.
The study employed the general semiotic approach, particularly the procedural tools of semiotics of passions, to reveal the ambiguity inherent in the text and clarify its meanings. This is done by addressing semiotic concepts and studying their effectiveness in analyzing the selected texts. Additionally, the study will employ a psychological approach to examine the characters' behaviors. This will be done by extrapolating the narrative texts, deconstructing their elements and ideas, to analyze the characters and their passions, and tracking the impact of these passions in the discourse, describing them.
This study concluded with a set of results, demonstrating how the procedural tools of semiotics of passions effectively revealed the manifestations of passions in the novel and how these passions influenced the understanding of the literary text and the clarification of its content. The study concluded that the novel Alone the Pomegranate Tree was characterized by two main identities: death and hope. In comparison, the novel Ya Maryam was characterized by two other identities: discontent and hope. Through the procedural tools, the study showed the predominance of some passions over others, and the state of contradiction that the erotic selves experience as a result.