Arabic Literature

A Study of the Ruler Archetype in Little Death Based on Pearson-Maar Theory

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Ali Asvadi 1
Zahra Izadi 2

1 Assistant Professor in Arabic Language and Literature, Kharazmi University, Iran

2 Master Student in Arabic Language and Literature, Kharazmi University

https://doi.org/10.22059/jalit.2021.316086.612338
Abstract
The character and its transcendence are common themes between mysticism, psychology, and literature. Hence, mystics and psychologists have always been curious about understanding it and identifying the path of its evolution. This curiosity has also been manifested in literature. Salient characters' appearance as heroes further adds to the significance of the function of the Self archetype. Little Death narrates the formation of the character of one of the distinguished faces of mysticism and Islamic Sufism, Muhyī al-Dīn Arabi. In a way known as the father of the unity of existence in Islamic thought, Ibn Arabi opened a new window to Islamic mysticism by founding theoretical mysticism. Ibn Arabi has propounded many theories in mysticism, the most important of which is the unity of existence and perfect man. The elevation and growth of the character are among the subjects that have reduced the distance between new psychological theories and genuine concepts in mysticism, such as the perfect man theory. Inspired by the autobiography produced by Sheik Akbar in his book Meccan Revelations, Mohammad Hassan Alwan adopts a post-modernist approach to narrate two parallel stories. The first story expresses the life events of Ibn Arabi, and the second story tells his biography. This paper examines the character of Ibn Arabi from a psychological and theoretical perspective based on the Pearson-Mar theory.To this end, the two stories were separated, and only the story of Ibn Arabi's life events was examined. Examining the ideas of Ibn Arabi indicated a significant relationship between his theory of perfect man and the archetype of the ruler (among the twelve archetypes of the Pearson-Maar theory). Upon departure, initiation, and return, the protagonist reveals the characteristics of the ruler archetype, which are close to the characteristics of the perfect man propounded by Ibn Arabi: Each has specific criteria for self-actualization of character potentials.

Keywords

Pearson-Maar
the Ruler archetype
Alwan
Little Death
Ibn Arabi
perfect man
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Arabic Literature
Volume 13, Issue 4
Winter 2022
Pages 1-15

  • Receive Date 09 January 2021
  • Revise Date 19 July 2021
  • Accept Date 21 December 2021

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