Arabic Literature

An Analysis of Satire Techniques in Mahmood al-Sa’dani’s Himar min al-Sharq

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Mitra Ali Shahi 1
mostafa mahdaviAra 2
hosain Mirzaineya 3

1 P.h.D. Student of Arabic Language and Literature, Hakim Sabzevari University

2 استادیار گروه زبان و ادبیات عربی دانشگاه حکیم سبزواری

3 Associate professor, Department of Arabic language and literature, University of Isfahan

https://doi.org/10.22059/jalit.2019.251441.611855
Abstract
Mahmood al-Sa’dani is an Egyptian contemporary satirist, journalist, and author. Many of his works are satires on socio-political issues of the Arab society. Humor is the only way he uses to express his thoughts and ideas freely and to criticize the cultural, political, social, and living conditions of the Arab world. His satirical speech explains the spiritual needs of the Egyptian society. In his book Himer Min al-Sharq, which is a controversial parody of Tawfiq al-Hakim’s novel A Sparrow from the East, Sa’dani depicts the cultural confrontation of the East and the West through his journey to Paris. In favor of the French culture, he criticizes the negative—or unfavorable—aspects of the Arab world and its social and political corruption with so artistic a satirical language. The irony is that he expresses the problems of the Arab society by praising them. Employing a descriptive-analytical method, the authors of this article intend to analyze this book to explain the satire techniques in it. The aim of this research is to explain the role that comedy plays in the explanation of and solving social problems and to measure the success of Sa’dani. The results of this research demonstrate that Sa’dani, with his powerful writing and great knowledge, has managed to express critical issues in creating irony through language techniques and reversal of values. Another point is that although both of these novels talk about the surprise of the oriental man in his confrontation with Western civilization, the satirical expression of the problems of the East and, in particular, the Arab society by Sa’dani shows that he neither accepts nor rejects al-Hakim’s view of the East, but Hakim, who first is of a non-material world view, changes his view and, like Sa’dani, comes to adopt a material perspective toward the East.

Keywords

Mahmood al-Sa’dani
Himar min Al-Sharq
Cultural confrontation
Technique
Satire
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Arabic Literature
Volume 11, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
October 2019
Pages 187-207

  • Receive Date 31 August 2018
  • Revise Date 16 October 2019
  • Accept Date 08 May 2019

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