Soaring with “contracted wing”, Anne Finch: a poet and critic defying all classification
Iman Farouk El Bakary
Bakary
author
text
article
2016
eng
This paper is a New Historicist, feminist study of Anne Finch (1661 – 1720) as poet and literary critic. The focus of this work is Finch’s mastery at subverting many of the poetic forms she uses, rebelling against the pressures exerted by the contemporary, male-oriented literary market, seeking to establish an unfettered female poetic voice, while criticizing the cultural, political, literary and social practices of urban, Augustan England.In addition, this paper seeks to undermine the narrow categorization of Anne Finch as a Pre-Romantic poet, disregarding the multi-faceted complexity of her work. Moreover, it is hoped that reviving the interest in such a unique poet and critic would establish her merit as a canonical literary figure of the first rank, alongside her male counterparts such as Dryden, Pope and Johnson.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
15
46
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123248_39fa45aa282bba1ed718c6f440120986.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123248
To BE or not to BE / To Cross or not to Cross The bridge in selected short stories: A phenomenological approach.
Inas Ahmed al-Ibrashy
Ibrashy
author
text
article
2016
eng
The question of 'Being' is an ontological issue that has intrigued both philosophers and ordinary people ever since the dawn of civilization. Indeed, this question has endured variable and various responses and reactions throughout the ages. In his magnum opus, Being and Time (1927) (Sein und Zeit), the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889- 1976) devoted his seminal work to the question of "What is Being" claiming that it had not been satisfactorily resolved. This study examines four short stories written by different writers of different nationalities. All short stories at hand were written in the thirties of the twentieth century and all have one focal spatial point; namely, 'the bridge'. The titles of the stories are The Bridge (written between 1916 and 1917 and published posthumously in 1931) or "Die Brücke" by the Czeck writer Franz Kafka, Old Man at the Bridge (1938) by the American writer Earnest Hemingway, Across the Bridge (1938) by the British writer Graham Greene, and The Bridge by the Russian writer Nicolai Chukovsky (1882 - 1969) mostly known for writing children's literature. The texts will be examined with the objective of tracing the relevance ofexistential phenomenology to these short stories with special reference to Martin Heidegger.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
50
80
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123249_4ede07b2dd24218821a444e4869f94b8.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123249
The Contribution of Arabic Literature to World Literature: Radwa Ashour’s Siraaj a Case in Point
Doaa Nabil Embabi
Embabi
author
text
article
2016
eng
Radwa Ashour identifies herself as an Arab woman and a Third World citizen (“My Experience with writing” 170). Throughout her career she has also consciously referred to her upbringing in the Cairo of the fifties and the sixties and her early schooling in a French school where teachers and students were predominantly French, and made her and her other Egyptian classmates feel inferior (“Tajrubati fil Kitaba” 121). She is also a graduate and later a scholar/ academic of English literature, in addition to the fact that she earned her PhD from the University of Massachusetts in the USA. This biographical snapshot is not meant introduce Ashour. It is rather meant to give a brief idea of the rich experience she had and to reflect on Ashour’s existence –by virtue of her background, historical moment, education, and choice – between the Arabic speaking world and the English speaking world in various capacities. Given her makeup as a person, academic and writer, and based on personal choices, Ashour was also an ‘oppositional’ and ‘worldly’ intellectual in the Saidian sense of the term. According to Edward Said, the critic/ criticism is “worldly and in the world so long as it opposes monocentrism, a concept …[Said] understand[s] as working in conjunction with ethnocentrism, which licenses aThe Contribution of Arabic Literature to World Literature:x I (84)culture to cloak itself in the particular authority of certain values over others” (53). This was part of the larger endeavor of Radwa Ashour. The themes of her writings – fiction and non-fiction – reflect this deep consciousness of the questions relevant to her own society, but are expressive of universal values as well [1]. Thus, this paper argues that Ashour’s works are not only a milestone in Egyptian literature but are also part of the world literature tradition.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
83
132
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123250_b0673055d6f816f403e609c5c855561c.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123250
Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor in an Egyptian Adaptation: A Study in Cultural Appropriation
Hoda Soliman Mohammed
Mohammed
author
text
article
2016
eng
The theory of adaptation is particularly applicable when examining M. Enani's Merry Wives, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor. Enani deals with Shakespeare's play as a main source of his play, trying to create a new Egyptian milieu for the events to suit the Egyptian reader and audience. Adaptation and appropriation are a practice of intertextuality. Enani translated the play into Egyptian Arabic. Enani felt that it would not be successful unless it was Egyptianized. To add local atmosphere, he titled his work Merry Wives, reformulated the names of the characters and changed the setting to an Egyptian suburb, Maadi, like Windsor Park in Shakespeare's play. Enani gave the characters native Egyptian names in place of foreign names. The entirety of Enani's play is written in Egyptian Arabic. Similar to Shakespeare’s play, Merry Wives is a farce comedy about the middle class, containing also characters both above and below it, but the events as a whole reflect the power and force of the middle-class. It is a comedy using physical humor and situational irony.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
135
188
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123251_5afe077fdef27fce723b972d7b7243b1.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123251
Buchi Emecheta’s The Slave Girl: An Afrocentric Discourse
Magda Ahmed Naim Haroun
Haroun
author
text
article
2016
eng
African Women writers share a long and traumatic history of colonialism, patriarchy and slavery. Despite the geographical diversity, the experience of colonial and racial subjugation unites them. African women writers’ politicalBuchi Emecheta’s The Slave Girl: An Afrocentric Discoursex I (192)awareness enlarges their communal vision that, in effect, transcends gender issues. This paper contends that the political, geographical, and social factors problematize the status of African and all women of color, which thus calls for a different approach than that of Western feminism. In her influential essay ‘Under Western Eyes’, Chandra Mohanty underlines the misconceptions prevalent in most Western feminist writing that “discursively colonize(s) the material and historical heterogeneities of the lives of women in the third world, thereby producing/representing a composite, singular “third world woman” – an image which appears arbitrarily constructed, but nevertheless carries with it the authorizing signature of Western humanist discourse” (53). Hence, the African female writer has a heavier burden to carry than the white, which explains the reluctance to embrace the label ‘feminist’. The colonization of Africa has certainly complicated the issue of gender relations, rendering the concept of Western feminism deficient in its tenets.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
191
216
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123252_65e3fd4a5b3a9ef1d608f9592472a75a.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123252
The Quest for the Ideal: Romantic Escapism in W. B. Yeats’s The Land of Heart’s Desire and Cathleen ni Houlihan
Mahmoud Gaber Abdelfadeel
Abdelfadeel
author
text
article
2016
eng
This research paper argues that “romantic escapism” is a recurrent motif in Yeats’s early drama, with specific regard to his two plays – The Land of Heart’s Desire and Cathleen ni Houlihan. The protagonists in both plays share a common romantic escapist attitude despite their mutual differences regarding the reasons beyond their escapism and the nature of the metaphysical ideal world they hope to escape to. They are quintessentially romantic seekers who hope to transcend their painful and boring realities to much more ideal worlds of liberty, immortality, spirituality, and happiness. Therefore, they set out on spiritual journeys, nourished by their romantic limitless imagination, to discover untrodden meta-realities ranging from that of the faeries to that of patriotism and martyrdom with the aim to break free from their mundane, tedious, and malignant physical realities. Through the use of the interdisciplinary approach, the researcher explores these psychological journeys within their social, religious, and political contexts with the aim to examine the theme of “the quest for the ideal” in the two plays under study, pinpointing the form that this theme assumes in each play.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
219
248
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123253_e609e5c04f3a2e20bbf95431bc948216.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123253
Things Fall Apart: Post-Apocalyptic Vision in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
Muhammad Jalal Khalifa
Khalifa
author
text
article
2016
eng
At noon in the desert a panting lizardwaited for history, its elbows tense,watching the curve of a particular roadas if something might happen.It was looking for something farther offthan people could see, an important sceneacted in stone for little selvesat the flute end of consequences.There was just a continent without much on itunder a sky that never cared less.Ready for a change, the elbows waitedThe hands gripped hard on the desert.William Stafford “At the Bomb Testing Site” (1960)
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
251
278
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123254_48de88feb8058351cb55748a3bf6874c.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123254
Reading the ‘anti- conquest’: A Critique of Orientalist and Exoticist Representations in Lucie Duff Gordon’s Letters From Egypt
Sherine Fouad Mazloum
Mazloum
author
text
article
2016
eng
This paper aims to analyze Lucie Duff Gordon’s Letters from Egypt in light of Mary Louise Pratt’s coined term “anti-conquest” which refers to “the strategies of representation whereby the European subject secures his innocence while maintaining western hegemony” (7). Taking Pratt’s term as a point of departure, the paper exposes the complexity of the representations of Egyptians in Gordon’s letters which simultaneously perpetuate English moral supremacy while acknowledging Egyptian diversity. These representations have contributed to constructing a specific image of Gordon as the Victorian traveler who could authentically represent “real” Egyptians. In this sense, the constructed image of Egypt is produced by the traveler’s gaze; however, this gaze is also a reflective gaze that reflects distorted images of the self. Gordon’s representations oscillate between reinscribing imperial hierarchical power relations while simultaneously humanizing the Egyptian Other. The paper draws on Victor Segalen’s concept of the exot to further explore Gordon’s representations whichemphasize Egyptians’ diversity. Hence, the study aims to engage with recent interest in women travel writing filling a gap in studies on Lucie Duff Gordon’s Egypt which tends to highlight one aspect only pertaining to her humane perspective of Egyptians.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
282
322
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123255_4bbf0bdf084105743c983058b9f243e4.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123255
Investigating Learning Autonomy for Saudi Male English Language Students
Khalid M. Alwahibee
Alwahibee
author
text
article
2016
eng
In this research learning autonomy for Saudi male students has been investigated. More than ninety students from different levels in the English Department at the college of languages and translation in Imam Mohammed Bin Saudi Islamic University participated in this study. They answered a questionnaire which consisted of 18 statements each of which gave an indication how much those students are independent in learning English and show whether or not if they were autonomous learners. The result showed that the majority of responses fell in the negative side of the continuum. This indicated that Saudi learners are not autonomous. To make sure of the response, the mean score for each item was investigated. It showed that only three items which students got more than 3, while the rest of the item were below 3. Some suggestions and applications have been presented for the administrators teachers in the English departments in Saudi universities.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
327
350
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123256_b247d11062db495997161d9fb238a77b.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123256
The Interface between Linguistic Units and Socio-cultural Frames in Egyptian Arabic: A Cognitive Diglossic Perspective
Zakaria K. A. Alssiefy
Alssiefy
author
text
article
2016
eng
The present research addresses the symbiotic relationship that exists between language and culture by investigating the link between linguistic units and socio-cultural frames in Egyptian Arabic ( EA ) from a cognitive, diglossic perspective. The research is based on the assumption that language should be viewed as a representation of the general cognitive processes, rather than a system governed by grammatical rules (Tyler, 2008, p. 459). In other words, the research attempts to explain how linguistic units including proverbs, metaphors, idioms, among other constructions, are reflections of certain socio-cultural frames. The crux of the research is to argue against Sapir -Whorf Hypothesis by demonstrating that such linguistic units are considerably influenced by the way the speakers view and experience the world around them. To this end, a research methodology combining the Cognitive approach, Wierzbicka’s (1979) “ethnosyntax” approach, Ferguson’s notion of Diglossia, and Malinowski’s Context of Situation, is adopted to demonstrate that linguistic units are strongly influenced by socio-cultural frames, and that both are bound up inextricably in various complicated ways. This might provide useful insight into the intimate relationship between linguistic units and socio-cultural frames, and how cultural factors can account for grammatical and semantic change in Egyptian Arabic.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
353
400
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123257_63484282e8f446059f58573068081d69.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123257
Translation and Shaping the Arab Identity in a Post-colonial Globalized World: A Multi-disciplinary Approach
Safa'a Ahmed Saleh
Saleh
author
text
article
2016
eng
Conflicts over identity are old and they emerged explicitly during the European colonial expansion in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries and they accelerated remarkably with a recent globalization wave that started in the early1990s. Philosophers, psychologists, mathematicians, logicians, politicians, among others, have found in the term "identity" a vivid niche where they can approach and research the issue. The relationship between identity, globalization, language and translation is so steadfast that a fresh perspective on the role of translation in this respect is urgently required. Hence comes the present research. It hypothesizes that there is a conflict between Arab identity and globalization and this is manifested in the role played by translation.This paper is an interdisciplinary examination of the role of translation in shaping the Arab identity in a post-colonial, globalised world, taking concepts from post-colonial translation studies, pragmatics, post-colonial theory of international relations and Samuel Huntington's theory of the Clash of Civilizations. It employs a dual methodology of content analysis and comparative study between English texts and their Arabic translations. It aims to reveal the nature of this role. Through the analysis of data, it concludes that translation has played a 'shameful' role in shaping the identity of the Arab World in the post-colonial era and thatglobalization is a new form of Western colonialism which targets the identities of other nations.
Egyptian Journal of English Language and Literature Studies
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Education
2735-4431
7
v.
1
no.
2016
405
456
https://ejels.journals.ekb.eg/article_123258_27319336d4b6f39e13c285dd0e21c0c9.pdf
dx.doi.org/10.21608/ejels.2016.123258