نشریه نقد ادب معاصر عربی
پیاپی 17 (پاییز و زمستان 1398)

One of the prominent features of Resistance Literature is the use of symbolic elements. In this respect, natural symbols have had a great role in expressing the thoughts and ideas of the resistance poets. Birds are among those natural elements that such poets have employed symbolically in order to enrich their poems. As a leading poet in the resistance literature, Samih al-Qasim has utilized the symbol and myth of birds to express the defiant and liberal ideas and, as a pretext, to object to the poor conditions of Palestinians. In addition, by employing symbols with positive and negative connotations, the poet has depicted the cruelty of tyrants, the viciousness of their deeds, and the necessity of Palestinians’ struggle and resistance. Since people and their homeland are the main themes of his poems and the symbolic images of birds imply those themes, the present study seeks to analyze the bird symbols used in Qasim’s poems. To do so, a great part his poems are deciphered.

Structural criticism is one of the most common methods of analyzing literary texts. French “Rolland Barthes” is a founder of this school, who has presented a model to identify or discover units of action, hermeneutics, semantics, symbolism and culture. They are called “five codes”. These codes transform signs into meaningful systems, thus creating a relationship between a sign and a signifier. Using an analytical-descriptive method, this study seeks to analyze the “Alquarib” story, as one of the short stories by Najib killany, who is a prominent contemporary Arab author. Based on the structuralist model, the five codes of the story are extracted and decrypted. The purpose of the study is to measure the extent of utilizing the principles of narration for the transfer of the author’s thoughts. The results indicate that the author poses a social disorder called hypocrisy as a cultural unit and introduces the main hero of the story as the symbol of this trait. The causes and motives of the one who has a tendency for hypocritical actions are clarified by referring to the dichotomies inside and outside his personality and by using semantic units such as secretarial jobs that involve pure obedience.

Critical discourse analysis, as an interdisciplinary field, goes beyond examining texts at the level of sentences and words; indeed, it focuses on the contextual framework in which the text is organized. Norman Fairclough is one of the theorists in this field who considers three levels of description, interpretation and explanation for his theory. Using a descriptive-analytical method, this study attempts to examine the three levels set by Norman Fairclough for the critical discourse of the four sections of Al-Khusuf novel. In this novel, Ibrahim Al-Kawni uses a combination of lexical repetitions, collocations, antonyms and conceptual and rhetorical metaphors. To explain the political, social and cultural conditions of the society, he also focuses on the foundations of realism and magical realism with references to various texts such as Quran, religious quotations, past poets, proverbs, folk idioms, and myths of the Sahara. He deals with anti-colonial discourse on issues such as the life of Tuareq tribes, the political, social and cultural unrest in the Libyan society during European colonialism, and the confrontation of tradition and modernity. The author mainly seeks freedom and change.

Ebrahim Nasrallah is the most remarkable Palestinian poet who has used symbols and sign language to write poems in favor of Palestinians and in objection to the arrogance and autarchy of the intervening forces as well as the occupation regime. Two of his works are “Fazihat-ol-Sa’lab” and “Na’man Yestared-ol-Looneh”, which include his most famous poems in criticism of war and colonialists’ injustice and oppression. In addition, his poems that invite Palestinians to fight and resistance are full of symbols and symptoms. This study is done by a descriptive-analytic method and aims to discover the hidden secrets of images as encoded on the covers of these two anthologies. An attempt is also made to survey the drawn images as meta-contextual concepts based on the semiotic theory. The results show that the studied images have a complete coherence with the content and the main idea of the works, and the imaginative and semiotic codes within these works are consistent with the main goal of the author and the content. In addition, the visual features including colors, lines, textures, spaces and shapes play important roles in the coordination between the designs and the meanings of the poems. This is suggestive of the poet's knowledge of visual perception. To design the covers of both books, the author has used spectral colors, whereas the designs in the subdivisions of "Na’man Yestared-Al-Looneh" benefit from a combination of white, black and gray spaces.

The opening of a novel is a window to enter the world of the fiction and to follow its events and happenings. In this regard, the beginning scene of the story and the way it is processed are the first elements that provide a complete overview of the narration of the story. The artistic processing of this part of the story is a technique through which preliminary information is communicated about the theme of the story and the relationship of the starting scene with the rest of the novel is understood. The plot is formed in the continuation of the narrative. The starting scene of the novel AL-Las va AL-Kelab begins in a way that provides the reader with the elementary clues of the general narrative. Later, through the creation of suspense in the early actions of the story, the reader is encouraged to follow the fictional actions. This is achieved via various techniques, including the choice of ironical words in the title of the novel, the inclusion of realistic and believable scenery, the use of a combinational pattern in introducing the characters and mysterious propositions with negative implications in the beginning of the novel. Applying a descriptive-analytical method, the present study aims at the analytical reading of the starting scene of Al-Las va Al-Kelab by Najib Mahfouz. The results suggest the writer's skill to successfully process this section of the novel.

Semiotics is one of analytical approaches devised in the second half of the twentieth century. A French-American critic, Michael Riftard, wrote a book on poetry semiotics and suggested that a poem can be dealt with through exploratory and reciprocal readings. The first reading examines the central meaning of the poem. In the second reading, with regard to linguistic implications, after the elements of negation are examined, the inner connection of the elements of the text is explained in the form of accumulation and descriptive systems. Then, the reader receives the holograms. Ultimately, these discussions lead to the reception and discovery of the structural network of the poem. This study is based on a descriptive-analytical method and aims at the reading of a part of the Belghyse poem by Nizar Qobbani, a Syrian poet. The exploratory readings of this verse indicate that the poet refers to the death of Belghyse so as to express his love for the beloved with romantic words. The reciprocal reading, however, shows that this poem has two accumulations and descriptive systems. In the first accumulation, the beloved is intended, and the descriptive system of that is homeland. In the second accumulation, Arab nations are intended, and the descriptive system of that is Arab identity. The poet refers to his community with symbolism. Finally, the structural network comes to help the reader. The findings of the research show that Reifatore's approach is in line with the Belghyse allegory, which can be used to take deeper insights into such issues as love, woman, national identity, homeland, freedom, struggle against despotism and backwardness.

Social criticism is one of the new theoretical frameworks that have emerged in literature. It seeks to shed light on the link between the literary text and the community and considers that the society influences the author. This influence leads to the creation of literary effects that are associated with the society and culture in which the text is born. Literary works also affect the society in different ways. George Lochatch and Lucian Goldman are among the most important theoreticians of this theory. In this regard, the present study seeks to analyze the novel "Chicago" written by Alaa Asvani. The results show that Asvani, influenced by the Egyptian society and the prevailing social conditions in Egypt during the presidency of Hosni Mubarak, has tried to address the obstacles and problems facing Egyptian intellectuals inside and outside Egypt. He then analyzes and reviews these problems. Asvani's novels, including "Chicago", play an important role in enlightening Egyptians and revolutionizing Egypt.

Decentralization refers to the mental ability of a child with which he or she jumps from one concept to another.  This often breaks one’s focus, but it promotes mental actions, encourages cognition and strengthens creativity. The phenomenon is manifested by certain techniques in children’s literature. These techniques are examined at the levels of text and image. Of these two, the image is of great importance. Some child-created pictures not only reflect decentralization but also break the anticipation of the audience. Thus, as a child sees such pictures, he or she is surprised and gets out of normal conditions, which causes the decentralization of his mind. In the present study, efforts are made to review the counter-anticipatory decentralization techniques in ten selected stories by Yaghoub Al-Sharoni (1931-2017), an Egyptian contemporary novelist. The stories are dealt with through a descriptive-analytic method and based on statistical data. The research addresses the manner of using unexpected images. The most important visual techniques found in the stories are the change of background, building up fantasies and introduction of geometry in the images.

Literature of a nation consists of components that serve as the best and most visible means of understanding the attitudes and the worldview of that nation. When it comes to recounting the intellectual foundations of a nation in the field of literature, post-colonial literature has a great contribution. This is because it expresses the attitudes and positions of that nation against foreign colonialism. The long-standing presence of French colonialism in Algeria has led to the emergence and prosperity of post-colonial literature in that country. The novel "Ghadan youmon jadid" by "Abdol Hamid ibn-e Hadouqa" narrates the effects of colonial racism on the people of Algeria. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present research seeks to analyze the most important fields of colonial racism in the novel and interpret them with examples. It also addresses the reasons for the emergence of colonial racism in the characters of the story and the way the author resolves this problem. The post-colonial analysis of the novel suggests that colonial racism has been practiced in the biological, religious, judicial, and internal aspects of the society. Vocational monopoly is another manifestation of racism. The author's strategy to get out of this crisis is to rely on indigenous culture and history, to gain knowledge about Europeans, and to reinforce the spirit of unity, resistance and oppression in the people.

Philosophy and literature have always had a close connection, and each has a great impact on the other. Existentialism is one of the philosophical schools that are closely related to the literature. Similarly, literature as an approach has affected existentialism. Some figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simon de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Dostoevsky, and Gabriel Marcel have introduced philosophical concepts through various literary forms. Existentialism addresses the common concerns of human existence, such as human suffering, the meaning of life, immortality, hope, love, faith, disappointment, futility of the world, liberation, death, and other human existential issues.
 Through a descriptive-analytical method, the present study aims at the existentialist manifestations of the novel Al-Shahaz. The most important components that have been considered in this research as the main axis of revising existentialist thoughts are mortality, the meaning of life, liberation, wandering, dread, anxiety, and a luscious look at the past. The result of the research suggests that the profound and proper understanding of the novel Al-Shahaz is based on the analysis of existentialist presuppositions. The title of the novel (i.e. beggar) is a manifestation of human destitution, which provides evidence for this claim. The existentialist strains of the novel postulate it in the category of existentialist works of the literature.

Psychoanalytic criticism, as one of the recent approaches to literary criticism, is based on the principles of psychology and the discovery of how the unconscious mind of a poet affects the creation of literary work and the criticism and analysis of literary texts. It is also a positivist approach that explores the mental values payoff an author. Contemporary Palestinian poetry is considered as one of the most prominent manifestations of humanity in the world literature. Using a descriptive-analytic method, this study seeks to identify the most important psychological characteristics of positivism in the anthology of Khalid Abu Khaled, a prominent contemporary Palestine poet. For its data, the study draws upon five booklets of poetry including Al-Jadal fi Muntasaf al-layl, and Shaheran Salasali Ajie, Baisan fi Al-romad, Asmika Bahran, and Dami nakhil lennakhil. An important finding of this study is the presence of active elements and the interconnection of positive emotions in his poems. For example, with a purposeful application of lexemes such as "Sofa" and the repetition of motivational words such as "wounds”, “blood” and “fire” as well as verbs that denote movement and uprising, the poet gives a rise to positive elements such as happiness, hope, wisdom and goodness. It inspires the audience to cross the challenges of life and achieve victory. Finally, by giving meaning and purpose to efforts for a bright future, his works play a significant role in creating mental health for the individual and the society and instruct the reader to focus on positive and constructive elements.

One of the most effective codes in a text is the title, which introduces the audience to the images as well as the signs and symbols encoded in the vocabulary at the beginning. Choosing a title for an ode is an important and sensitive stage in poetry and reflects the poet’s outlook and experience in relation to the audience. The study of the audience's input in the text is a part of semiotic investigations. The title puts the reader in a position to think about the text and precisely understand and conceive the overall context and the message. In the same vein, AbdulAziz, the contemporary Yemeni poet, chooses the term "the diary" and a historical figure so as to present his main theme and to help the reader better understand the content of the ode. The results indicate a deep relationship between the title and the text of the studied ode. Also, the poet has successfully linked the terms as well as the structural and the semantic fields of the text to the reader. The function of the title of his ode is to express the theme of the stability of the Yemeni people against colonial oppression.  Studying the title of this story at the glossary level reveals the richness of Yemeni folk heritage and its deep roots. The results point to the poet's profound skill in artistic and aesthetic features. At the structural level, the harmony between the voices in the title, the harmony of creation, and the phonetic link in the title are characterized by the repetition of the letters and the last syllable, implying that a savior still seeks to endanger his life to release people from their suffering. At the semantic level, there is a deep and coherent relationship between the title and the text. This tight link serves to prove to the audience the truth of the tenets of the text; that is, the domination of sorrow, homesickness, and incurrence of suffering for the freedom of the homeland.