Arabic theatre, Egyptian theatre, Contemporary theatre, Abu¯ al-?Ila¯ al-Sala¯mu¯ni¯, Lenin al-Ramli¯, Fath?iya al-?Assa¯l, Naksa, Arab Spring, Tawfi¯q al-H?aki¯m, Yu¯suf Idri¯s, Majdi¯ al-H?amza¯wi¯, Arabic literature, Egyptian literature, Intellectuals, Al-masrah? al-Mis?ri¯, Alternative characters, Revolution, Committed literature, Al-adab al-multazim, PN2974.M26, Sala¯mu¯ni¯, Muh?ammad Abu¯ al-?Ula¯, Ramli¯, Li¯ni¯n, Theater--Egypt--History--20th century, Theater--Egypt--History--21st century, and Arabic drama--Egypt--History and criticism

This research explores the development of the discourse of power and the role in the development of this discourse of the arts and artists as dramatised in contemporary Egyptian theatre from 1967 to 2018. While Egyptian theatre of the pre-1967 and post-2011 periods has received comparably more scholarly attention in Western academia, the post-1967 period has generally been neglected. This period has been described as one of decline and as such of no scholarly interest. Through detailed analyses of Egyptian plays of the period in question, predominantly those by Abū al-ʿIlā al-Salāmūnī and Lenin al-Ramlī, this study fills an important gap in existing scholarship by linking the pre-1967 and post-2011 developments in Egyptian theatre. As such, it aims to achieve a better understanding of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary developments in Egyptian theatre in the context of the socio-political and cultural life of the country. The prologue introduces the topic and the concerns of the research. The six content chapters are grouped into two chronological periods. Chapters one to four focus on the plays of the last three decades of the twentieth century, and chapters five and six examine twenty-first-century plays. Chapter one examines the representations in the plays of characters who practise leadership. Chapter two discusses the self-reflexive technique of representing intellectual leadership in the form of theatre within theatre. Chapter three discusses the representations of common members of society and society as a whole. Chapter four is devoted to analyses of female characters in Egyptian plays. Chapter five looks at al-Salāmūnī's and al-Ramlī's work in the early twenty-first century, examining their returns to the issues discussed in the previous chapters. Chapter six identifies how the 2011 revolution and the events following it have been reflected in theatre. The epilogue summarises the conclusions of the research.

Umayyad poetry, Kuthayyir ibn Abd al-Rahman, Ghazal poetry, Arabic Literature, Classical Arabic Poetry, Qur'an, and Arabic Poetry and Ritual

This dissertation offers a comprehensive study of the life and work of Kuthayyir ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, a love poet and panegyrist who died in AH 106/725 in his hometown of Medina, in the Hijaz. The dissertation reexamines the rise of monothematic love poetry in the pre- and early Islamic period, and offers a new perspective on the relationship between poetry and power, between early Islamic rituals (such as the performance of the Hajj) and rightful claims to rulership, and between cognate motifs in Umayyad poetry and the Qur'an. The interpretation of the life and work of Kuthayyir sets Hijazi love poetry of the first Islamic century within the historical context of political contexts and patronage programs in the period during and following the conflict known as the Second Fitna. Chapter One introduces the fundamental challenges to the study of Umayyad-era poetry, outlines the approach to the sources, and surveys Kuthayyir's life and textual corpus. Chapter Two reviews the scholarship on the emergence of love poetry in the first Islamic century, provides a reading of the akhbar frame in which Umayyad-era ghazal is presented, then provides translations and philological commentaries on four of Kuthayyir's ghazal poems. The translations are followed by two essays studying aspects of Kuthayyir's poetics, comprising a study of the poet's frequent references to pilgrimage (ḥajj), and a discussion of the poet's deployment of a 'love-sick' poetic persona that evokes parallels with prophet-narratives in the Qurʾān. Chapter Three then offers a comprehensive account of Kuthayyir's career as a panegyric poet, tracing his successive patronage relationships, translating and interpreting his major praise poetry, and exploring thematic and tonal overlaps between the poet's love poetry and panegyric. The dissertation makes the case that Kuthayyir's ghazal and panegyric should be read together, and that his patronage by the post-Fitna Marwanid elite must be considered central to our historical interpretation of his poetry. While his love poetry embeds the expression of individual erotic experience within the landscape of the sacred Ḥijāz, so does his praise poetry deploy the representation of the Ḥijāz and its rituals as a means for affirming Marwānid claims of authority. This interpretation of Kuthayyir's work is contrasted to earlier interpretations of Umayyad-era ghazal poetry, which have focussed primarily on ghazal poetry as a creative manifestation of the disruption engendered by the societal shifts of the first Islamic century.