تمثيل الغائب في أدب الأطفال : قراءة في ثلاثة نصوص لمحمود شقير

Abstract EN

This study examines three texts directed at children written by the Palestinian writer Mahmoud Shuqair.

On the one hand, the study deals with these texts from the perspective of a number of shortcomings which Shuqair notes characterize children's literature, and on the other, on the basis of the patriarchal Arab societies' perception of children and its impact on the literary outputs that target this group of readers.

Following an introduction and a brief outline of the status of children's literature in Palestine and the Arab world, the study highlights how Mahmoud Shuqair's texts overlook the shortcomings he himself noted of children's literature, in four areas.

The first addresses how the texts distance themselves from the tone of directness in the preaching and indoctrination of the right/proper behavior; the second addresses its capturing of imagination as a condition for creativity; the third is its being characterized by gender awareness; and the fourth is its representation of the pluralistic social fabric of the Palestinian society that guarantees richness and stability.

The study concludes that the collective discourse incorporated in Mahmoud Shuqair's three texts is a representation of the absent from children's literature, and the rise of this discourse as an alternative to discourses built-in in many literary and non-literary texts targeting such a sensitive group of readers who supposedly are expected to form and characterize our future Arab societies.