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392770

Cultural Encounters on Stage

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

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Tags

Studies in World Literature

Abstract

Works of the renowned Egyptian playwright, Tawfiq al-Ḥakīm (1898-1987), are rich sites of cultural encounters between the local and the global, and the Egyptian traditional folk dramatic conventions and the Western models. Many of his literary productions like Ahl al-Kahf [The Men of the Cave] (1939), al-Malik Udīb [Oedipus the King] (1949), Yāṭāliʿ al-shajarah [O' Tree Climber] (1962) reflect not only how the local and the global interact but also how they overlap and transform each other. The aim of the research paper is to examine how al-Ḥakīm in his book Qālibunā al-masraḥī [Our Theatrical Mold] (1967) utilizes the long-standing European theatrical discipline in his reworking of many canonical plays including Hamlet. The theoretical concepts of appropriating, contact zones, borderlands narrative, and counter canonical texts are employed to describe how al-Ḥakīm's Hamlet in moving from its British context to the Egyptian morphs, changes, and incorporates local performative elements into the “European mold" (Qālibunā al-masraḥī 1967, 14). Thus, it produces “new theatrico-cultural system" (Balme 1999, 18) that suits the Egyptian cultural identity and bridges the gap between the indigenous performative traditions and the European paradigms. The study concludes that al-Ḥakīm's revisiting and reworking of Hamlet along with the other excerpts showcases the complexities of cultural encounters.

DOI

10.21608/tjhss.2024.336427.1278

Keywords

cultural encounters, Tawfiq al-Ḥakīm, Hamlet, local and global

Authors

First Name

Ghada

Last Name

Abdel Hafeez

MiddleName

M

Affiliation

Arab Open University-Bahrain

Email

ghada.abdelhafeez@aou.org.bh

City

-

Orcid

0000-0002-7397-9411

Volume

5

Article Issue

4

Related Issue

50949

Issue Date

2024-10-01

Receive Date

2024-11-14

Publish Date

2024-11-20

Page Start

118

Page End

129

Print ISSN

2636-4239

Online ISSN

2636-4247

Link

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/article_392770.html

Detail API

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=392770

Order

392,770

Type

Original papers

Type Code

1,090

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Transcultural Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Link

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Cultural Encounters on Stage

Details

Type

Article

Created At

25 Dec 2024