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Hagaras an Archetype Matriarch: A Comparative Study of Ostriker’s “The Opinion of Hagar”and Kahf’s “Hagar in the Valley”

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Last updated: 03 Jan 2025

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Abstract

This paper marks out the archetype figure of Hagar, one of the most revisited examples of motherhood in the corpus of Islamic and Jewish studies. The researcher shows that both Alicia Ostriker, Jewish-American poet and critic (born 1938), and Mohja Kahf, an Arab-American poet (born 1967), attempt feminist readings of Hagar's story. The study tackles Hagar in Ostriker's poem “The Opinion of Hagar" and Kahf's “Hagar in the Valley". Both poets retell their traditional Jewish and Muslim narratives and depend heavily on scriptures and religious heritage. Through Hagar's story, they both reflect on contemporary cultural issues; discrimination against women and the hardships faced by immigrants are two main issues that Ostriker and Kahf see in the story of Hagar. Yet each poet has a different focus and different manners based on adaptation and appropriation of the original story. The reinterpretation of Hagar's narrative depended on the poets' religious sources, as well as on each poet's reception of the narrative. The two poems of ‘Hagar' are considered a recovery for the female voices that have played a significant role in the development of women's religious history in the United States of America. With intertextuality, the two poets situate the narrative of Hagar as an archetypal and mythical figure for all women and as a key text in interfaith dialogue between Judaism and Islam

DOI

10.21608/jssa.2016.11348

Keywords

Hagara, Archetype Matriarch, Ostriker, Comparative study

Authors

First Name

Suhair Nafie Abdulaziz

Last Name

Al-Shaia

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Affiliation

قسم اللغة الانجليزية کلية البنات جامعه عين شمس

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Volume

17

Article Issue

العدد السابع عشر الجزء الثالث

Related Issue

2126

Issue Date

2016-08-01

Receive Date

2018-08-18

Publish Date

2016-08-01

Page Start

1

Page End

33

Print ISSN

2356-8321

Online ISSN

2356-833X

Link

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/article_11348.html

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https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=11348

Order

21

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

653

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة البحث العلمي في الآداب

Publication Link

https://jssa.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Hagaras an Archetype Matriarch: A Comparative Study of Ostriker’s “The Opinion of Hagar”and Kahf’s “Hagar in the Valley”

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Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023