Houman Nazemian, Zhila Azimi,
Volume 3, Issue 1 (4-2022)
Abstract
New historicism is an approach that emerged in response to traditional methods and traditional historicism in the late 20th century. New historians consider history a set of conflicting discourses and address the marginalized voices. They believe that what historians write is not an objective recording of the past events but the interpretation and narrative of the past events based on the discourse of historians. Therefore, history has a discursive nature and is a tradition of narration. In 2012 Rabee Jaber the Lebanese novelist won the International Prize for Arabic fiction for his novel “Druze of Belgrade”. This thesis tries to examine the novel from the perspective new historicism in order to recognize the relation of text with historical discourses. the results of the study show that there are six discourses represented in this article: the discourse of ottoman government, the discourse of European governments, the dialogue of the Balkans, the discourse of prisoners of prisoners, the discourse of Lebanese Christians, and the discourse of Muslims of the Balkans. It also shows that the novel focuses on the marginalized voices and the victims of sectarian violence and governance, whose representatives are on one side, imprisoned Druze, and by the other, Hanna Yacoub and his family. The novel tries to provide a positive image of Druze, contrary to official discourse of Ottoman Empire.
Abdulbasit Arab Yousefabadi, Fatemeh Piri ,
Volume 5, Issue 4 (6-2024)
Abstract
Narrative analysis play a pivotal role in modern and postmodern literary studies. Within this literary periods, the traditional and historical mode of narrative analysis are replaced with new one whereby it distanced itself from monophonic and linear narratives. This mode of narrative not only dispensed with coherent narratives and grand narratives but also blurred the boundaries between personal pronouns as the result of which the “self” mode of narration is replaced by the “other” mode of narration. Literary critics call this mode of narration “polyphonic”. Considering the significance of this mode of narration, this research examines different dimensions of polyphony in Rabee Jaber’s novels. In Confessions (2007), he utilized polyphony in such a way that most of the characters play an important role in the narration of the events of the story and the narrator does not control other characters. This research finds that polyphony in this novel is observable through multiple points of view, multiple characters, and the presentation of social and political issues from different angles. This multiplicity/diversity reinforces the storyline and provides new perspectives on the realities of the Arab world, as well as the use of multiple verbal styles in presenting the characters of the narrative. In this novel, Rabee Jaber does not narrate his confessions to the audience; rather it is a narration of him by others.
