Paper Title
Feminist Narrative Writing of Nawal El-Saadawi: Her Literary Methods Within Three Successive Novels
Abstract
Nawal El-Saadawi is a prominent feminist intellectual Arab woman, who her involvement was not only in scientific writing in the field of health and medicine to express her feminist views and philosophy, but also in contemporary creative narrative works, particularly novels and short stories.That is to say, she uses fictional narrative as a weapon in her campaign against Arab patriarchal society, focusing on feminist views and philosophy as well as calling for a whole rebellion against social patriarchal norms and oppression, employing several creative narrative styles and techniques. Here are some of her novels: Women at Point Zero (1975), The Circling Song (1978), Two Women in One (1983), The Fall of the Imam (1987), Death of an Ex-Minister (1989), She has no Place Paradise (2000), The Novel (2005), Zeina (2009) in addition to other novels and short stories.To date, while several studies have addressed El-Saadawi’s non-fictional works, views, and philosophy, most scholars have only repeated commonly held views about her fiction in general and her narrative works in particular. In not paying sufficient attention to El-Saadawi’s narrative works, the field has failed to appreciate the distinctly feminist dimension of her novels and short stories. This study aims to explore and investigate in particular literary devices and techniques employed for advancing her feminist agenda, comparing such devices and techniques in threesuccessive novels of El-Saadawi:Two Women in One (1983), The Fall of the Imam (1987), and She has no Place Paradise (2000). This study hopes to contribute to a fuller understanding of Egyptian feminist writers of the 20th century by addressing the narrative works of El-Saadawi.I will use the method of literary analysis employed which draws upon Mieke Bal’s approach to narratology.
Keywords - Nawal El-Saadawi, Literary Feminism, Literary Devices, Techniques, Woman Novelist