The study of historical meta-information in Al-Mutanabbi's suffering with perfection of Kamal Aboudib and vice versa

Abstract

Metafiction is a form of literature that emphasizes its own artificiality in a way that continually reminds the reader of the fictitiousness of the work. Historiographic metafiction is a term used for works of fiction which combine the literary devices of metafiction with historical fiction. The contributors maintain that the Arabic literature reflects the Western postmodern conditions without denying its own traditions. As such, the Arabic literature paves the way for an important cultural dialogue between East and West. The novel Al-Mutanabbi's suffering with perfection of Kamal Aboudib and vice versa, authored by Kamal Aboudib,a Syrian narrator and critic, is one of the works of Metafiction in terms of structure and content. The author has attempted to describe the events of Al-Mutanabbi's life, the great Arab poet, and relates him to the problems of contemporary man, the world and Arab history. In this research, based on the descriptive-analytical method, we try to find the historical aspects of metafiction in this fiction. The results of the research indicate that the use of historical characters from different periods as well as the deliberate denial of some real events in the life of the poet refers to the future perspective of the history. It is also shown that many of the writing scruples and conventions available in history books have been violated by postmodern writers. Indeed, they have crossed the boundaries of time and place.

Keywords

• metafiction
• historiographic metafiction
• al-mutanabbi
• kamal aboudib
• al-mutanabbi's suffering