Chiara Fontana

موضوع  هذه المداخلة هي قراءة تأملية لرمز "الرأس المقطوع" في الطقوس والحكايات الشعبية الصقلية  وبعض الاحتفالات الشعبية في شمال افريقية (عاشوراء). ويمكننا ان نرى أن هذا الرمز، بعيدا كل البعد عن التفسير السلبي القاسي (انظر الى الاحتفاء بقدوم رأس الحسين في مصر والاسطورة الصقلية "رأس الأسمر – A' tiesta ru moru" و)، فله قيمة ابيستيمولوجية مهمة في تصوير الطقوس المرتبطة بمفهوم الحياة الجديدة بعد الموت (القصة الصقلية لجيوفاني بوكاتشيوGiovanni Boccaccio  "ليسابيتا من ميسينا -Lisabetta da Messina") وعلى المستوى المجازي في تحديد طابع الخلود لبعض المشاعر الانسانية ومن بينها: الحب والحاجة الى التناسق بين المذكر والمؤنث (كحكاية "مزهرية الريحان –A' grasta ru basilicò") واستئناس آلام الشهادة والموت "كرجوع مستمر" الى تلك الفرحة الاحتفالية بالذكرى التي تنقذ الانسان من النسيان والانحطاط الأخلاقي (انظر الى تقاليد "عيد الاموات" في صقلية).

Studies in pragmatics accurately claim that cursing and venomous expressions are influenced by conversational variables such as the speaker-listener relationship, the communication’s contextual setting and the implicatures (Searle 1969; Grice 1975). Within the Arabic linguistics tradition and mostly due to al-Ǧurǧānī’s revolutionary semantic approach (Sweity 1994), these variables are one of the main fields of inquiry with respect to al-balāgha (Ghersetti 1998). The linguistic naẓm of cursing and swearing and their features such as brevity (īǧāz), deep communicative impact (ṭab‛ balīgh) and resort to figurative speech (luṭf li-l-maǧāz) reveal how these expressions are clearly based on rhetorical patterns. The rhetorical pattern of illocutionary acts of cursing is used not only to alienate the listener from the conversation but also, at times, to deeply engage him or her within it when the dispute is a tamthiliyya (simulation), as with jokes (Beebe 1995) or with figurative – such as ...

On the back cover of the first Italian edition of A Thousand and One Nights (fl.IX-XVI) translated from Arabic [Gabrieli1955], the brilliant Italian writer, journalist and painter Dino Buzzati (1906-1972) stated: “This is the Bible of the tale. A timeless monument as the mountains". Years before Buzzati, as a journalist for the newspaper “Corriere della Sera”, driven by his love of mountains, Egyptology and the desert, had already followed the experiences of orientalist Giuseppe Tucci in Tibet (1933), later drawing upon them in writing the Desert of the Tartars (1940). In this novel the fabulous tones of the Nights are merged into the Sahara/Sahel’s landscapes – full of symbolism/ hermits/marauders – in which imagination is the only means of escaping from the evil of the WWII [Citati1996]. Besides the themes above, I argue that the frame structure of Buzzati’s short stories allow us to explore the author’s linkages with the Nights – which is also cleverly referenced in certain ...

This study of the Egyptian intellectual Najīb Surūr’s critical essay, Riḥlah fī Thulāthiyyat Najīb Maḥfūẓ (c. 1978; A Journey into Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s Trilogy) argues that this underexplored work of Surūr is a brave assessment of the Egyptian literary canon of the 1950s. The argument finds justification in the author’s unique mastery of irony, and his vigorous textual engagement with Maḥfūẓ’s widely acclaimed masterpiece. Throughout his essay, liberated from a “snow pile” of sensational success, Surūr dives into Maḥfūẓ’s novel Bayna al-Qaṣrayn, in order to bolster his conviction that all authors and genres deserve in-depth analyses. Arguing the viability of applying the Constance School’s Reception Theory in evaluating Surūr’s revolutionary reading, this paper seeks to resituate new aesthetical and ideological paradigms in criticism within the broader context of extra literary/intraliterary dynamics that give birth to competing works of fiction. Surūr’s effort also highlights a compellin...

Western studies on Persian metrical system debate the linguistic origins of quatrains, (Per. robāʽiyyāt - Ar. rubāʽiyyāt) in Arabic, and regard prosodic Persian schemes independently of Arabic counterparts, despite reciprocally influenced metrical patterns. Attempts to dismantle Arabo-centric critical inferences about Persian metres are largely prosodic observations of the robāʽi/rubāʽī, thus neglecting their ontological evolution from a metrical scheme into an aesthetically experimental frame in Persian and Arabic poetry. This study closely investigates the spread of robāʽī/rubāʽī from Persian to Arabic literature employing a holistic culturally embedded methodology to reread their linkages in global terms, as an example of an inherited “Proto-World Literature”.

The issue of the immigration leads to reorganize the whole social architecture of the societies in which it occurs. Considering the urban environment as a microcosm which has a great deal of influence on global dynamics, it is right to think about the living conditions of urban citizens who live in the multicultural present societies, often suffering marginalization. As the last researches claim, the local government system is the one that could help to deal with the immigration matter in the best way and this also needs to be urgently addressed, as the “Immigration in Sicily” case study could show

This study of the Egyptian intellectual Najīb Surūr’s critical essay, Riḥlah fī Thulāthiyyat Najīb Maḥfūẓ (c. 1978; A Journey into Najīb Maḥfūẓ’s Trilogy) argues that this underexplored work of Surūr is a brave assessment of the Egyptian literary canon of the 1950s. The argument finds justification in the author’s unique mastery of irony, and his vigorous textual engagement with Maḥfūẓ’s widely acclaimed masterpiece. Throughout his essay, liberated from a “snow pile” of sensational success, Surūr dives into Maḥfūẓ’s novel Bayna al-Qaṣrayn, in order to bolster his conviction that all authors and genres deserve in-depth analyses. Arguing the viability of applying the Constance School’s Reception Theory in evaluating Surūr’s revolutionary reading, this paper seeks to resituate new aesthetical and ideological paradigms in criticism within the broader context of extra literary/intraliterary dynamics that give birth to competing works of fiction. Surūr’s effort also highlights a compelling mismatch between young authors’ de jure inventive ambitions and their de facto conciliation with previous models.

Western studies on Persian metrical system debate the linguistic origins of quatrains, (Per. robāʽiyyāt - Ar. rubāʽiyyāt) in Arabic, and regard prosodic Persian schemes independently of Arabic counterparts, despite reciprocally influenced metrical patterns. Attempts to dismantle Arabo centric critical inferences about Persian metres are largely prosodic observations of the robāʽi/rubāʽī, thus neglecting their ontological evolution from a metrical scheme into an aesthetically experimental frame in Persian and Arabic poetry. This study closely investigates the spread of robāʽī/rubāʽī from Persian to Arabic literature employing a holistic culturally embedded methodology to reread their linkages in global terms, as an example of an inherited “Proto-World
Literature”.
Keywords: Persian and Arabic Literatures, Rhetorical and Metrical Studies, Comparative Philology, Quatrains, Rubā‛iyyāt, World literature.

Studies in pragmatics have shown that cursing and foul-mouthed expressions (C/FMEs) are influenced by conversational variables such as the speaker-listener relationship, implicatures, and the context of communication. Within the Arabic linguistics tradition, and specifically with respect to al-balāġa, these variables are one of the main subjects of inquiry. Specifically, the linguistic naẓm of cursing and swearing and their features such as brevity (īǧāz), communicative impact (ṭabʻ balīġ) and use of figurative speech (luṭf li-l-maǧāz) reveal how these expressions are based on rhetorical patterns. Taking into account the jestful, foul-mouthed and/or libertine poetical style of muǧūn within the Mediaeval Arabic Literature tradition, the rhetorical patterns of implicit and explicit illocutionary C/FME acts, as mostly used in ironic/satirical discourse, reveal how C/FME can be employed as a powerful literary device. This paper aims to observe the rhetorical features of C/FME as employed in contemporary muǧūn, drawing upon the in-depth analysis of excerpts quoted from the poetic works of the Iraqi poet Muẓaffar an-Nawwāb (b. 1934), and the Egyptian poet Naǧīb Surūr (1932 - 1978).

Employing a methodology which gathers the traditional Arabic rhetoric-grounded tools of analysis, cross-temporal sources on ethnopoetics, and Arabic folk literature, this paper focuses on mawwāl’s revival (Egyptian traditional folksong) within Najīb Surūr’s (1932-1978 ) experimental dramaturgical production. In particular, providing a brief philological overview of mawwāl’s challenging origin and evolution, this study argues how an Arabic linguistically/rhetorically grounded approach to the little-explored mawwāl’s structure and subjects, not only enhances how it is clearly based on rhetorical patterns. It also enable us to reconstruct a more organic criticism on Surūr’s conscious attempt at broadcasting an innovative form of playwriting within the framework of innovations provided by the Sixties and Seventies’ generation of Egyptian authors.