Eroticism in the Works of Contemporary Egyptian and Levantine Female Novelists

Abstract

Literary and narrative discourses hold an inherent correspondence between themselves and the social, economic, national, and political issues that govern the atmosphere in which they emerge, including those concerning the war of the classes and of the sexes. Using the erotic as a parameter, this paper analyzes three novels by three contemporary women novelists from Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria: Nawāl el-Sa’dāwī, Ḥanān al-Shaykh, and Samar Yazbek, respectively. An analysis of the combination of language, culture, and space can lend itself to an examination of the relationships of power and social hierarchies that govern societies, in a fashion that follows the Foucauldian power/knowledge social theory. Adopting the Lacanian perspective of language as an inherently sexist utility, this paper examines the approaches found in these three novels to the objectification of the female body; the yearning to reclaim agency; and the success – and failure – in regaining and retaining autonomy.