نشریه نقد ادب معاصر عربی
پیاپی 10 (بهار و تابستان 1395)

For a long time, color has played an important role in the creation of literary work. Poets have sometimes employed colors in order to materialize the artistic images and to discover the relationship between the components of those real effects felt. And sometimes they have used the symbolic color space in line with explaining the unspeakable thoughts. The roots of the application of the symbolic concepts of colors should be sought in light of personal experiences, the political situation, the philosophical orientations of the poet and especially in the extension of complexity and ambiguity of the poetry. Khalil Havi is among those contemporary Arab poets who have employed symbolic colors to a large extent. In this research, attempt has been made to study the position of color in the Khalil Havi`s poetry and its symbolic concepts. The method is analytical and descriptive. The results obtained indicate that he has used colors in expressing his mood or his political and social goals. The most widely used color in his poems is black which implies stagnation, psychological distress, resentment and amusement. Thence, the red, white, green, yellow and blue are the most widely colors used in the Khalil Havi`s poetry.

Sociology of Literature, as a subcategory of sociology of art, analyzes the relation between society and literature. It also analyzes the social essence of literary works. This discipline has attracted the attention of sociologists and literary critics in recent centuries and has persuaded them to theorize on it. George Lukacs, the Hungarian critic, is among the critics who have played a major role in the development of this discipline through presenting a critical theory for criticizing novels. His theory is based on the criticism of both form and content and includes particular criteria the most important of which are realism, typical characterization, cause and effect relations as well as social content. In the present study, we have criticized one of the novels of Ala-el-Asvani (Egyptian contemporary writer) named The Building of Yaqubian based on the realism criterion. The superiority of realism, critical realism, and popularity are the three major features of Georg Lukacs’ realism, each of which includes a fixed framework consistent with his views. The obtained results show that Asvani has disclosed the current realities honestly and bravely. He has further critically revealed the social contradictions and portrayed the problems of his contemporary people.

Archetypal criticism, which is based on psychological criticism, is one of the main contemporary approaches of the literary criticism that explores the nature and characteristics of the myths and the way they function in literature. The current study aimed at investigating Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s novels based on archetypal criticism perspective and the emergence of the collective unconscious dimension and mythology in the author’s works. It was hypothesized that the author has focused on the archetypes or the collective unconscious level of the mind. The main research question was whether the author’s novels can be reexamined based on hero archetype criticism and his return, death and rebirth. The selected novels by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra were analyzed using analytic-documentary methods on the basis of archetypal criticism. They were further analyzed via the return of hero archetypes, death and rebirth as well as the manifestation of archetype symbols of trees, mountains, valleys, caves, springs, wells and numbers. The analysis of the results reveal that hero archetypes, death and rebirth have been represented in Jabra’s novels and the author has employed symbols and mythologies to render them more meaningful.

Najib Mahfouz is one of the prominent writers of Arabic fiction who was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1988. Kuche Madq is one of his most famous novels. Using events in a quarter called Madaq, he symbolically portrayed the difficult social and economic conditions of Egypt lower and middle-class people during the final years of World War II (1944-1945) and the British domination on the country. Najib Mahfouz has used all the fiction elements among which characterization is a key theme. In this study, the author tries to analyze the characters of the novel - minor and major, static and dynamic- among fiction elements, through the indirect characterization techniques (act, speech and labeling). The results indicate that the characters in this story are the real examples of people living in Egypt. Although the writer has used all characterization methods, he has mostly concentrated his attention on characterization via dialogue and naming.

Gender socialization is a subjective process based on socio-cultural relations and is strongly rooted in the beliefs and values of the society in which men and women are segregated and attributed to particular features. The basic question pursued in this research is whether gender socialization can affect women's identity and limit their personal and social lives. If yes, to what extent can these limitations harm women behaviorally and psychologically? This article, which is a descriptive-analytic research, applies a gender socialization criticism and studies its effect on three short stories namely, "I am"; "The remains of a woman" and "Never coming back" by Qmashh Allyan. The results show how women, affected by their incomplete gender socialization, provide grounds for their humiliation leading to the destruction of family foundation. Having experienced failure and frustration in their expectations, women get extremely passive and risk deviant acts the problems of which can be traced at both individual and social levels.

In human thought ultimate-looking approach, eternity inclination has been the purest, the most pleasant and maybe the most sorrowful melody since the ancient times. This has created the essence and the abstract of the most prominent odes of creation in human mind. Dealing with this concept appears an enchanting and inescapable case not only in contemporary age in Arabic eastern literature and especially before Tamooz school poets but also from the time of Gilgamesh Epic and search for eternity herbals to’ the desire for human eternal return in God-believer creeds and life water stream thought or Ayn al-hayat.
Drawing from the mythological criticism, the present article tries to read as case studies those groups of Abd Al-Vahhab Al-bayyati’s writings on death in which eternity songs and reexisting poems are uttered and from the very deep and sorrowful and deathline existence promises Ishtar presence and return of existence soul and life spirit to the earth outhomnal corpse and its alien residents. Given the above, the eternity inclination in Al-bayyati’s poems will be reviewed in this research on the basis of the most prominent patterns of herbal goddess of old myth of rebirth and resurrection of Iraq’s people (Mesopotamie in old times). The results of this study show that among the poets raising the resurrection and eternal return concepts in the contemporary Arabic literature, Bayyati is the most prominent poet who has focused on this concept. Hence, he is not the only the poet who conveys and recalls old legends in his resurrection ballads, but also a creator of another kind of mythology in the new age.
*This essay is derived from the author's research with nomber 27826 advocated by Ferdowsi University of Mashhad.