Muthana Makki Mohammedali

This article aims at investigating the rhetoric of artistic composition in a modern sufi jaz piece conducted by the Egyption band Cairo Steps. It is an attempt to present a rhetorical reading of a musical event that features Sheikh Ehab Younis in an Arab-German collaborative performance based on Erik Satie's Gnossienne- No. 1

Post 2003 Iraq witnessed the emergence of digital popular culture. Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube...etc were used to break the old monopoly of culture production and self expression. Anecdotes, poems, stories, videos, and montaged photos became so popular that they could be argued to be competing with mainstream culture. This is an indication to the failure of the elite to come up with solutions to the hurdles the country faces.

This paper aims at exploring whether the American poet laureate Robert Lee Frost (1874 - 1963) was a regional poet, regionalism being the inclination to employ local colors and elements that focus on a certain locality which could be an indication of ethnic or local pride on one hand, or a criticism of certain regional features or situations on the other.
          Frost mainly wrote poems of rural settings and characters, this could mislead the casual reader to take him as a nature poet. Through his American voice, New-England setting, and tendency to extend his vision beyond the local, he expresses an attitude that let his natives see him as a national poet; in spite of the regionality of his setting, style, and characters, while others could touch the humanitarian and universal tendencies in his poetry.
The paper opens with an introduction in which the definition of regionalism is discussed with reference to the literary implications of the term; the discussion is supported by various literary examples from world literature in general and American literature in particular. Then the regional features of the poet's writings are explained; they include, but are not limited to, the regional setting of New-England, the Puritan heritage, and the influences of American historical events on his attitude; especially the indictment of the Native American-Indian. The paper ends with a conclusion that summarizes the final findings of the paper.

This paper aims at investigating mechanism of survival in ethnic writings; it takes as examples for the study the American novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and the Iraqi novel Hither and Thitherby Inaam Kachachi.
The paper starts with introductory remarks on the term “ethnicity” in relation to the Other, in the light of Colonialism and hegemony. Stereotype images of ethnic minorities are outlined as they are often presented in mainstream literature.
Then the paper moves to examining certain patterns of behavior, which are detected in Black characters in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
This is followed by investigating the mechanisms of survival in Hither and Thither by the Iraqi novelist Inaam Kachachi.
The paper ends with a conclusion that summarizes the final findings of the study.

This paper is concerned with exploring Emily Dickinson's views on pleasurand pain and the conflict between them that results in a synthesis in which the two opposites are reconciled. The paper begins with a historical perspective on the concepts of pleasure and pain as they were tackled in different ancient schools of thought till the recent time. This is followed by an explanation of the philosophic term of " dialectic " in reference to George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), the idealist philosopher, who is considered one of the most prominent thinkers of German to discuss the major factors that led to the century. The paper then moves th the 19 appearance of the dialectic phenomenon in Dickinson's works. The second section of the paper is devoted to investigating a group of Dickinson's poems that tackle her musings on the sensation of pleasure which represent the thesis in her dialectics. Section three tackles the opposing concept of pain, which represents the antithesis, and the speculations and outcries heard in a number of the poet's poems. The last section of the paper shows how the oscillation between the extremes of joy and agony are resolved in a double-faceted synthesis in which joy and anguish are considered complementary and necessary for the existence of each other. The discussion is enhanced with quotations from Emily Dickinson's poems. The paper ends with a conclusion that outlines the final findings of the study. This is followed by endnotes and a bibliography in which the sources consulted in the paper are listed.

This paper investigates the ideas of the American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) on identity and the mystical concept of identification in his poetry. The paper is divided into three sections. Section one is an introduction that starts with a brief account of the poet's life and thought. This is followed by brief notes on the influences on Roethke's thought and poetry. Section two contains the main body of the paper; in which the researcher reveals Roethke's vision of the cosmos in relation to its constituent parts. The discussion sheds light onto two aspects: the human self and the material world, and the human self and Divinity. The poems chosen for the study show the poet's attempt to reveal the bonds that tie the inner self with the physical world on one hand, and with divinity on the other; they also exhibit the fluctuation of the speaker's identity and his assuming different identities during his spiritual communion with the outside world. Finally, the paper ends with a conclusion that sums up the findings of the study.

This paper is concerned with exploring the individualistic characteristics that set Hemingway " s protagonist, Santiago, away from the society among which he lives. The paper starts with an introduction defining the concept of individualism as it is used throughout the paper; this is followed by a historical background for the development of the term with references to schools of thought and their standpoint of the concept of individuality. The paper moves then to show how the main character in Hemingway " s novella bridges the gap between the classical (heroic) and modern (everyday man) types of protagonists. This is followed by a detailed revelation of how the character manages to transcend the frustrations and limitations imposed by the old man " s bad luck and his mocking and disrespecting fellow citizens not only to survive, but also to regain respect in a world that seems to revere youth, sophistication and good luck. In order to do this, Santiago " s individualistic qualities are scrutinized and the emphasis is laid on the character " s intrinsic intuition and his exceptional spiritual relationship with both the animate and inanimate objects in his world. In addition, the old man " s transcendentalism, seclusion, independence, primitivism and endurance are dissected. The paper ends with a conclusion in which the main findings are outlined. This is followed by a list of references in which the sources and references consulted in this paper are listed.

The dominant critical focus on Maya Angelou's writings has been on the thematic features of her texts. Linguistic and stylistic appraisals on her works are generally sparse. This paper is a stylistic study of Maya Angelou's autobiographical novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It aims at examining the stylistic features of the text vis-à-vis the semantic Law of Transitivity so as to investigate the features that contribute in the discourse's trespassing the sphere of informing to the sphere of interaction and influence. The paper starts with brief notes on stylistics in relation to semantics. This is followed by a discussion of the Law of Transitivity, frequent references are made to John R. Searle's patterns of metaphor. The varied forms of the relations between the signified or the source (the vehicle) and the signifier or the target (the tenor) in relation to the sign (the common ground) are discussed in the light of the figurative devices employed by the author and the functions achieved in revealing the ideological issues of race and gender in the book. The study attempts also at positioning the formal and psychological elements within a sociocultural context in order to promote the reader's understanding of the purposes and functions to which certain linguistic choices are made.

This paper is concerned with exploring Emily Dickinson's views on pleasurand pain and the conflict between them that results in a synthesis in which the two opposites are reconciled. The paper begins with a historical perspective on the concepts of pleasure and pain as they were tackled in different ancient schools of thought till the recent time. This is followed by an explanation of the philosophic term of " dialectic " in reference to George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), the idealist philosopher, who is considered one of the most prominent thinkers of German to discuss the major factors that led to the century. The paper then moves th the 19 appearance of the dialectic phenomenon in Dickinson's works. The second section of the paper is devoted to investigating a group of Dickinson's poems that tackle her musings on the sensation of pleasure which represent the thesis in her dialectics. Section three tackles the opposing concept of pain, which represents the antithesis, and the speculations and outcries heard in a number of the poet's poems. The last section of the paper shows how the oscillation between the extremes of joy and agony are resolved in a double-faceted synthesis in which joy and anguish are considered complementary and necessary for the existence of each other. The discussion is enhanced with quotations from Emily Dickinson's poems. The paper ends with a conclusion that outlines the final findings of the study. This is followed by endnotes and a bibliography in which the sources consulted in the paper are listed.