JOURNAL OF MODERN CRITICAL ARABIC LITERATURE
Year:2018 | Volume:8 | Issue:14 (16) |Papers Count:7

Jacques Lacan linked postmodern psychoanalysis with linguistics and proposed an unconscious language theory. He introduced and analyzed the stages of “ subject” development through language and “ other” and “ little other” based on the “ imaging order” , a“ mirror” stage, the symbol or name of “ father” and “ the real” . In this process, poetry and art are replaced by a “ sense of lack” . Rita Odeh is a poetess who reconstitutes her identity in relation to “ other” and, by transition from this stage, she imposes her identity on all the possibilities. The unconscious language of the subject is a kind of the Other that takes the symbolic order (social and cultural rules) beyond himself. According to Lacan, Other creates fluid and splits identity through the unconscious, desire and lack. That is represented in the poetry of Rita. This article studies some of Rita’ s poems in a descriptive and analytical way. The poetess lives in the Middle East, Palestine; hence her poems are fraught with such issues as identity challenges, split, integrity, hopelessness and identity reconstruction. The entire process is associated directly with other. For this reason, based on the theories of Jacques Lacan, one can feel the way the subject and the other and the sense of lack are created in her poems.

Psychoanalytic criticism is a kind of literary criticisms that has been in practice for a century. In this kind of criticism, the literary work is criticized and analyzed from a psychological perspective. One of the works that has the capacity to being criticized in the scope of psychology is the “ Orazat-al-khosoum” play written by “ Ali oghleOrsan” . It is considered to be about the problems in an Arab society. The character of “ Omme-salim” represents a plenty of actions and reactions that originated from her subconscious. The paper aims to study which of the three personality elements (i. e. ego, superego or id) makes Omme-saleem show such behavior. The analysis of her character is based upon the subconscious theory of Freud. Ommesalim is the main character of the play who takes action according to her superego’ s wants. Her superego has entered an irrational phase to achieve her objectives, and this causes a conflict between her ego and superego. This conflict ends in overcoming her superego. In fact, Omme-saleem is the symbol of superego in the play. She also resorts to the defensive mechanism of regression in two situations to be released from mental pressure and anxiety.

The short story "jedran men hadid" by Ghassan Kanafani reflects human values and concepts. It is a world full of excitement in a real atmosphere of exile and displacement felt by the Palestinian people. Because children are the future of the country and, as an important mission, we need to inform and educate them, in this study, we have focused on meta-linguistic and linguistic relationships in the light of the theory of social semiotics by Halliday. We have analyzed the encoding of Palestinian human being, his nostalgia, the indications of the presence of children, and their relationship with these concepts. The results show the author’ s concerns for children so that it would be useful at the root of the society. He uses mental and cognitive processes at the highest frequency to encode the reality and help to understand such abstract concepts as freedom, captivity, and exile. In addition, the meta-linguistic features such as signs of temporal and spatial relationships, attitude, facial expressions and behavior are investigated as a supplement to the message and in line with the conveyance of the meaning.

Establishing any type of communicative action in social systems requires the leading role of semiotic units. This element, as the smallest functional mechanism, has attracted the attention of numerous scholars. One of its most important aspects is Yuri Lotman’ s semiotic approach, as the link between sociology and literature, which utilizes the power of fantasy in service of the community and is named ‘ semiosphere’ as the interface of language and culture. Play is one of the most significant grounds relevant to the realm of social bias. In this area and in the contemporary Arabic literature, we see literary scholars, such as Salah Abdel Sabour, who express their views in different ways when facing important national and international issues. Abdel Sabour, like Lutman and Pierce, believes in a semiotic structure not only for the language but also for the whole universe. In line with his particular view, Abdel Sabour goes beyond that and assigns a new semiotic aspect to objects and types. The salient sample of this movement is vividly reflected in the plays of ‘ The Princess is Waiting’ and ‘ The Night Traveler’ . In addition to the poet’ s power in making meaning in these two plays, his divergence concerning a single issue is in the same historical period. As such, this paper aims at examining this issue based on Lotman’ s model of semioshere. The approach used in this study is a thorough comprehension of the semiotic atmosphere of these two plays and reanalysis of the semiotic functions with regard to Lotman’ theory.

Shahrzā d is the most famous motif in the world of fairy tales in Arabic Nights which entered the context of contemporary Arab literature. Arab literary figures, poets and writers, have employed Shahrzā d as a useful symbol in their works. Abdolwahhā b Bayā tiis one of those poet pioneers in the field of application of mythical and historical figures in the contemporary poetry. Shahrzā dis one of these figures that Bayā tiutilizes as a symbolic motif to criticize the influence of false traditions on the life of women in his conservative society. The poet composes a Jeremiad for a country which is grabbed in the grip of tyranny and colonialism and weeps for the urban man who has broken up with the mom of nature and sacrificed his soul at the feet of the urbanization idol. In the present article, the author aims to review Symbolic Shahrzā d’ s character by analyzing Abdolwahhā b Bayā ti˒ s verses and to explore the symbolic implications of Shahrzā d. The author also tries to show that Bayā ti˒ s Shahrzā d is a poetess of a traditional society both yesterday and today. On the other hand, she is depicted as the symbol of the author’ s country and simple rural life.

Alienation is one of the most important issues for the contemporary human. Alienation dates back to the mankind creation. Researchers of different fields have presented numerous interpretations for it. In the current century, psychology and sociology have different approaches to alienation. R. K Merton (1910-2003) was an American sociologist that studied alienation in the matrix of social abnormalities. His theory is known as ‘ the end-means theory’ . On the basis of this theory, Mozafar Navab, an Iraqi contemporary poet, may be claimed to have been somewhat alienated from his society, i. e. both the government and the people, in terms of his approach for reaching his goals. This paper aims to study the following three issues using a descriptive– analysis method: 1) Navab’ s personality according to Merton’ s personality types, 2) the most important tools to overcome his alienation, and 3) the impact of end and means on the idioms and words in his ode. The obtained results clarify that the poet has a nonconformist personality. Also, he believes that social structures are not efficient enough for him to reach his goal. Thus, he wants to use rebellion as an approach against governments which use such means as censorship, demagoguery, and so on to save their domination over Arab nations. The high frequency of informative and subjunctive statements is the prominent feature of his ode. Moreover, the marked words such as, bullet, fire, blood, greif, Hossain, Khaled Eslambooli, emphasize the poet’ s nonconformist thoughts against the society and government, along with his revolutionary ideas.

The present inquiry attempts to provide a content and statistical examination of papers in the journal of Contemporary ArabicLiterary Criticism published by Yazd University. This biannual journal is a credible publication in the area of Arabic language and literature in Iran. In this study, the number of authors, their qualifications, the extent of co-authorship among them, active facilities and institutions contributing to journals, etc. are examined. The results of the study show that there are 70 papers published in 10 issues of this journal; consequently, the journal has adhered to its publishing order. Statistics regarding the authors demonstrated that there are eight and 62 papers written individually and by group partnership respectively, which is also considered as one of the strengths of this journal. Furthermore, 44 of the articles were the outcome of within-university cooperation of the authors, while 18 papers were the outcome of the cooperation of members of different universities; the journal must strive to further improve such partnerships. Having authored four papers, Faramarz Mirzaei and Ali Salimi have produced the highest number of articles. There are also 12 papers written through partnership with the editorial board, with an acceptable average of 7. 59%. The main subject of almost half the papers includes fiction literature and poetry analysis. It would be more appropriated if various issues of the journal are edited based on a particular subject. Overall, there are 1657 references used, with an average number of 23. 6 references per paper, which is acceptable. However, most of these references are books, while it would be better to use more up-to-date references such as papers, dissertations, etc. Also, the mean age of 55. 76% of references is over 14 years.