Roghaieh Rustampourmaleki, Zahra Aghajani Alishah ,
Volume 1, Issue 1 (winter 2019)
Abstract
In My Heart A Hebrew Girl (2012) is a contemporary novel written by the Tunisian author Khawla Hamdi. The novle is written based on a real event that took place in Palestine and south of Lebanon whereby a group of people convert to Islam and resist oppression. In his influencial S/Z (1970), Roland Barthes proposes five narrative codes for textual analysis: Hermeneutic, Proairetic, Semantic, Symbolic, and Cultural. This article adopts a analytical-decriptive framework to exmine the textual representation of hermeneutic and proairetic codes in In My Heart A Hebrew Girl. The importance of this study is twofold: first it examines contemporary Arabic novel and second reads the novel based on Barthes’ narrative codes. The article finds that the author uses all Barthes’ narrative codes particually hermeneutic and proairetic codes because event and suspense constitute the main narrative bulk of the novel. The symbolic code is reflected in binary oppositions like Mulims and Jews, Islamic and Jewish hijab, light and dark, and behavior of characters. Also, the semantic code is reflercted in the characterization of Rima who as a Palestinenian suffers from oppression, against which other Muslim countries show no reaction. Finally, the cultural codes can be observed in Islamic and Jewish religious rituals and teachings as well as Palestinian resistance and jihad for the homeland and freedom.
Fateme Akbarizadeh, Masoomeh Negravi,
Volume 2, Issue 1 (Fall and winter 2021)
Abstract
Women in the Egyptian and Iranian society have played a prominent role in contemporary social and political events whereas Creative female personalities, such as the Iranian “Simin Daneshvar” and the Egyptian “Radwi Ashour”, appeared in the novel. In fact, they were interested in portraying the role of women in society through the writing of the novels "Siraj" by Radwa Ashour and “Savushun” by Simin Daneshvar. For this reason, the research has dealt with the overlap of the two narratives and on the general discourse prevailing over them in order to stand on the faces of the intended discourse of these two writers, approaching the analytical descriptive method, based on the realist school according to the feminist critical comparison approach in light of the American school of comparative literature. The research found that the two narratives overlap in terms of monitoring the social contents and real events in their society, and for this reason, the prevailing discourse became embodied in the historical discourse, and a return to history to monitor a social discourse to depict the role of women in Iranian and Arab society, while the two narratives abound with intense vocabulary, expressions and descriptions that depict women. In vocabulary and expressions so that an attempt was made to suggest the role of women and broadcast the woman’s voice through internal dialogue and retrieval of time from history, and for this the end of the two novels was a pioneering role for women in a feminist discourse and this stage passed through an emotional experience of the writers with social events and political facts in their Iranian and Arab countries for an honest expression that fulfills the feminist discourse And historical passing through the heritage.
فاطمه Akbarizadeh,
Volume 19, Issue 2 (8-2025)
Abstract
The study of places and environmental sites in human societies is not limited to topographical studies or geographical studies only, but we can study the place from a cultural and intellectual perspective from the standpoint of literary studies from literary criticism. The novel, as a socio-literary work, narrates events and, perhaps following the perspectives of Paul Ricœur and Hayden White, engages in emplotment or the structuring of scattered facts into a coherent narrative. This involves weaving together places and their related events, vividly depicting their features as their voice rises alongside the characters to represent life in all its diversity as a means of strengthening and enriching identity and as a non-historical document. The novel "The Baghdad Clock" by Shahad al-Rawi, one of the most famous contemporary Iraqi novels, recounts the conditions of Iraqi society amidst the atmosphere of war and focuses on Baghdad and its various places as the epicenter of events to form the novel's plot. Through this, it portrays the intellectual, civilizational, and cultural image as the identity of the nation's people. This article aims to study the semantic features of place in the novel "The Baghdad Clock" using the descriptive-analytical method. It concludes that the novel attempts to emplot history by linking reality and imagination to delineate the identity of Iraqi society, particularly in Baghdad, across time from the past to the future. It narrates the civilizational, intellectual, and cultural landmarks of the place according to lived experience, where the identity of the place is inseparable from the identity of the individual. The novel presents Baghdad as an imaginative realm pulsating with life, where places transform into significant symbols of collective memory and belonging, contributing to the construction of characters and the formation of collective consciousness. The research shows that the novel blends the real and the imagined to offer a resistant literary image that narrates Baghdad and its places, and formulates its narrative identity from the depths of pain, nostalgia, and hope. Place in the novel, from the neighborhood to the Ma'mun Tower, from the grandmother's house to Al-Zawraa Park and the Baghdad Clock, is reshaped through the narrator's personal memory, becoming a vessel for cultural, historical, and emotional connotations that reflect the depth of the collective experience of its inhabitants.
