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387203

Challenging Hierarchical Relationships in American and Egyptian Drama: A Comparative Ecofeminist Reading in Two Representative Plays (Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nig

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

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Tags

اللغات الأجنبية

Abstract

The current paper attempts a comparative reading of two plays by the Franco-British American playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker (1951) and the Egyptian woman writer, Salwa Bakr (1949), in the light of critical ecological feminism. These two plays are, seriatim, The Love of the Nightingale (1996) and Hulm al-Sinin (2002 [Dream of Years]), which are set against the concept of ‘up-down relationships', propagated by the two leading exponents of patriarchal feminism, Val Plumwood and Karen Warren. Both Plumwood and Warren reflect a concern about such a logic of domination, based on suspect values, dualities and presupposes, whose inevitable result is nothing but the oppression of the natural world. Women, in particular, are the ones who fall prey to the subordination of one group over another, within a single society. That is why ecofeminist advocates always think about, even act on behalf of the environment culturally, ethically, and, of course, naturally, with a view to creating a balanced justice instead of male sovereignty, while preserving the spiritual nature of the social habitat at the same time. In this theoretical framework comes the present comparative reading of the two aforementioned plays, with the aim of understanding the reactions of different cultures towards ideologies regulating relations between men and women, especially in patriarchal societies in the Arab East. How does Wertenbaker address the ecofeminist issue thematically and technically? How does she look at her characters and coordinate relations among them? What is her final vision about male-female relationships? Does Egyptian Bakr agree or disagree with her American counterpart? And how? What are her ways to do that? This is just a set of intersecting, connected questions that the reading at hand will try to answer.

DOI

10.21608/jwadi.2024.387203

Keywords

Timberlake Wertenbaker, Salwa Bakr, The Love of the Nightingale, Dream of Years, ecofeminism, Karen Warren, Val Plumwood, hierarchical relationships, oppression

Authors

First Name

Usama Nabih

Last Name

Raslan

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Associate Professor, Department of English, Faculty of Archaeology and Languages, Matrouh University, Egypt

Email

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City

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Orcid

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Volume

44

Article Issue

44

Related Issue

51103

Issue Date

2024-10-01

Receive Date

2024-10-20

Publish Date

2024-10-01

Page Start

85

Page End

132

Print ISSN

2536-9555

Online ISSN

2682-4582

Link

https://jwadi.journals.ekb.eg/article_387203.html

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https://jwadi.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=387203

Order

387,203

Type

المقالة الأصلية

Type Code

1,243

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة وادي النيل للدراسات والبحوث الإنسانية والاجتماعية والتربويه

Publication Link

https://jwadi.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Challenging Hierarchical Relationships in American and Egyptian Drama: A Comparative Ecofeminist Reading in Two Representative Plays (Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nig

Details

Type

Article

Created At

25 Dec 2024