Trauma, Narrative, and History in Rabee Jaber’s Yusef the Englishman and the Druze of Belgrade

Abstract EN

The paper employs Cathy Caruth‟s trauma theory to read two historical novels by Lebanese novelist Rabee Jaber: Yusef the Englishman and The Druze of Belgrade.

Deploying the features of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Jaber uses the paradox of “immediacy and belatedness”, and “recurrence”, insofar as they become features of all aspects of his narrative technique.

Jaber is thus able to avoid the pitfalls of sectarianism and partisanship that are all too common in the historiography of Lebanon.

The juxtaposition of traumatic events with motifs of rebirth and regeneration makes readers feel they are, to use John Russon‟s term, “bearing witness to [the] epiphany” of human greatness.

In light of this epiphany, self-aggrandizing, grievances-nurturing, and mutually-incriminating narratives are shown to be not only a threat to stability and peaceful coexistence, but also an ignorant/arrogant reproduction of the trauma and victimization that have caused them to be written in the first place.