Arab identity in the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and Lena Tuffaha

Abstract EN

The issue of self-identity is an intricate and a multi-layered one.

Any definition of the self involves a multiplicity of factors within and beyond the self.

Those factors may be momentous to the shaping of the self to the extent that they become the lens through which the individual perceives him/herself.

The two poets discussed in this paper, Mahmoud Darwish and Lena Tuffaha, have journeyed in a process of self-exploration in which they perceived their identities from the perspective of a lost homeland.

This paper attempts to illuminate the poets' self-identities through the lens they perceived themselves.

It examines their ongoing process of revisioning with regard to their self-conception.

The paper draws on several self-theories which help illuminate the different facets of their self-identities in relation to their homeland and makes use of the motifs of time and place in the discussion.