The aim of this article is to examine Gibran Kahlil Gibran's ideas, as articulated in The Procession (Al-Mawākib), in the context of New England Transcendentalism, in particular Emerson's and Thoreau's. Even though critics recognize Ralph Waldo Emerson (and less frequently Henry David Thoreau) as an influence on Gibran, the precise nature of the influence has not been spelled out clearly. In this study, I shall attempt to do so. To the end of establishing the New England Transcendentalist influence on Gibran more firmly and coherently, I locate, explain, and highlight some of the striking echoes, similarities, and analogies (linguistic, philosophic, as well as structural) in Gibran's The Procession, on the one hand, and Emerson's essays and Thoreau's Walden, on the other hand. Such an examination of the relationship will certainly enrich the meanings of Gibran's poem, shed a new light on his ideas, and suggest an angle from which his philosophy is best viewed.
This article argues that Emile Habiby’s The Pessoptimist (1974) reinvented the Palestinian novel within a new literary genre, post-realism. Habiby’s masterpiece employs a complex, noncommittal narrative that in many ways defies, even eludes understanding, and this is its strength. In order to make the narrative more approachable, this paper attempts to contextualise the novel within a postmodern sub-genre, post-realism, making its more subtle and hidden meanings and dimensions reveal themselves. To this end, the article begins by defining realism and post-realism as literary terms and then pinpoints several key post-realist moments in this highly elusive novel. To deepen the analysis, narrative strategies employed in the novel are compared and contrasted to a similar postmodernist novel, Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952). Ultimately, the article contributes to developing a new sub-genre, post-realism, within the main, mother genre of postmodernism, which can not only be seen as a reinvention of the Palestinian novel, but also be used widely in literary studies.
Drawing on Edward Said’s “Beginnings theory,” which is the central thesis in his book Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975), several post- 9/11 narratives reflect means for perceiving how these various accounts foreshadow a new era in both literature and political discourse. These accounts constitute a “beginning,” to use a Saidian term, heralding a new vision of the Islamic (Arab)/Western representation; a shift from a “historical pattern.” In this study, the tension created by turning a “historical aboriginality” into personal representations is reevaluated from a Saidian perspective. Such post- 9/11 narratives lend themselves to manifesting how the interrelation between an “obligation” for narration and a “sympathetic imagination” create beginnings. To achieve this end, the study will examine two narratives: Jonathan Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005) and Alia Yunis’ The Counter Night (2009). By advancing and investigating these narratives, the study aims at reaching new ideas about the representation of a major event in political history, namely: 9/11.
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