مغامرات الشطار بين علي الزيبق و روبين هود : دراسة مقارنة

Abstract EN

This thesis introduces an applied research study on popular literary heritage in the field of comparative literary studies.

The thesis has tackled one of the most significant historical and social phenomena which societies and cultures witness in times of regression and decline: [Ᾱ-Shattara], or the phenomenon of ‘trickster cunningness’.

Popular sentiment has celebrated this phenomenon in diverse cultures and has made its kinsmen popular heroes, whose actions and stories were glorified and passed down by popular imagination, becoming popular heroes and artistic models in literary and popular heritage.

The essence of this research study is to highlight this phenomenon and its heroes in popular heritage by way of the texts and stories of the most two famous artistic models of tricksters and adventurers in the Arabic and British popular cultures: the trickster ‘Ali al-Zāībaq in the Arabic culture and the outlaw Robin Hood in the British culture.

The thesis objective traces similarities and differences between the two artistic models in the studied texts.

The thesis proceeds with an examination of the origins of these similarities and differences created by the popular imagination of both cultures in the political, cultural and social systems which were prevalent in the Arab and British societies at the time.

The thesis, therefore, adopts a comparative research approach affiliated with the perspective of the American school which uses historicist and critical approaches to serve comparative literatures and excludes the condition of historical relationships.

The thesis has sprung from a number of central problem statements and has aroused subsidiary questions demanded by the nature of this research study.

These questions are manifested in: underscoring the basic elements which distinguish the stories and folktales of this literary genre from other popular folktales; stressing how far the texts and folktales of this literary genre have agreed and disagreed in diverse popular cultures, especially in the Arab and British cultures to which both artistic models and the studied popular heroes belong; and exhibiting how far the two artistic models of ‘Ali al-Zībaq and Robin Hood agreed and disagreed and the evolution of their narrative structures and adaptations.This research study has revealed a number of agreements between both popular heroes ‘Ali al-Zībaq and Robin Hood.

These agreements are exemplified by: the developments affecting their storytelling; the final structure of their artistic models as to the conception of the witty grifter; and a number of the formative elements of the narrative structure in their artistic structures on the level of characters and their functions, action and incidents, time and space, and linguistic fields and the general architectonics.

These similarities have not effaced elements of dissimilarity between the Arab and British popular cultures as to some details which disclosed the distinguishing features of both cultures and their societies