“Umm al-Rūbābīkā” (“The Pedlar Woman”) as Short Story and Play: A Comparative Study of Two Literary Works Under the Same Title

Proceedings of the 2nd International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Science

Year: 2019

DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/2iachss.2019.02.45

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“Umm al-Rūbābīkā” (“The Pedlar Woman”) as Short Story and Play: A Comparative Study of Two Literary Works Under the Same Title

Maysoon Fuad Shibi

 

ABSTRACT: 

Literary genres differ from each other in a variety of aspects. Every genre possesses its own distinctive features, and writers choose whichever one they want in order to transmit their message through the text. Whatever the message is, it can be conveyed with any literary genre. In the present study we focus on two works by Emile Habibi (1922-1996), a short story and a play (a monodrama), which tell very similar stories and have the same title, “Umm alRūbābīkā”/“Umm al-Rūbābīkyā” (“The Pedlar Woman”).1 The study focuses on three primary aspects: Dialogue, narrative and title. These aspects are studied comparatively in order to show the similarities and the differences between both of the literary works.

Key Words: Emile Habibi, Modern Arabic literature, Palestinian literature, monodrama, play, dramatization, short story, dialogue, monologue, narrative, title, symbol.