The “Urmann” is a Woman. A Re-reading of Yūsuf Idrīs’ Abū ar-riǧāl

Authors

  • Jolanda Guardi Universitat Rovira i Virgili

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13135/1825-263X/1392

Keywords:

Yūsuf Idrīs, Egyptian literature, gender studies, queer studies

Abstract

In this article I propose a close reading of Yūsuf Idrīs’ short story Abū ar-riǧāl. This text, published by the Egyptian author in 1988, addresses issues of homosexuality as opposed to the idea of masculinity prevailing in the social and political discourse of the Eighties in Egypt. Homosexuality is not a new subject in Arabic literature. It is in fact present in the literary production in the Arabic language since the Classical Age, and several homosexual characters can be noticed in modern and contemporary literature. The difference stands in presenting homosexuality without censorship or moral judgment, and above all masculinity is conceived by parameters, which are others in respect to those of the state discourse. When the short story was published, it passed almost unnoticed by the Arab reading public while scholars in the West did not discuss the issue at the core of it. Nowadays, when a lot of novels and short stories by Arab women and men writers propose the homosexual character anew, Abū ar-riǧāl testifies the presence of different point of views in the Arabic literature.

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Author Biography

Jolanda Guardi, Universitat Rovira i Virgili

Jolanda Guardi’s research focuses on dynamics of the intellectuals and power especially as deployed in Arabic literature and gender issues, subjects about which she has extensively published in Italian, Spanish, English, French, and Arabic. In 2010, she was awarded the Custodian of the two Holy Mosques International Award for Translation, and in 2011 she was named Theologian Honoris Causa. She contributed with entries in the two volumes Encyclopaedia Muhammad in History, Thought, and Culture (2014), which was awarded in 2015 the RUSA Award for “Outstanding Reference Sources”. She conducts at present her research at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili of Tarragona (Spain).

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Published

2016-01-27

Issue

No. 18 (2014)

Section

Secondo momento – Letterature / Stage Two – Literatures

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