A Critical Study of Postmodern Existential Boundaries in ʻAbd al-Karīm Burshīd’s Play, Ibn al-Rūmī fī Muduni Al-Safīḥ

Metafiction is one of the most prominent literary genres in postmodern literature. Meanwhile, metanarratives have been able to introduce themselves in the field of literature with the help of special features rooted in postmodernity. In the meantime, the ontological features in metanarratives are able to deal with philosophical-existential issues opening a postmodern dimension without following any particular order in the author’s views and thoughts. In a sense, it can be closely associated with some other features of metanarratives, namely, uncertainty, artificiality, historiography, temporal anxiety and the author’s entry into the text as the leading focus of existential anxiety within the story. Accordingly, the objective of this article is to scrutinize metafictional ontology in ʻAbd al-Karīm Burshīd’s postmodern play Ibn al-Rūmī fī muduni al-ṣafīḥ. However, the present article, with the aim of developing and using the descriptive-analytical method with the play in question, seeks to answer the question as to what extent the existential boundaries in Ibn al-Rūmī fī muduni al-ṣafīḥ are influenced by postmodernist criteria? The initial impression of the research notes that the author has the greatest influence on the existential views reflected in the text and has managed to change the existential boundaries at times drawing on the omniscient point of view. Time uncertainty and anxiety have also played a role in drawing the boundary between existence and non-existence to the extent that the author's historiography along with the inner characters of the text have also led to a display of time anxiety and failure. Likewise, the author's clear expression through a fictitious text has led the reader to dwell in the boundaries between reality and fantasy with the existential boundaries have been blurred once again