Reclaiming The Narrative: Modern Female Voices in The Narrators Told What Shahrazad Did Not Tell: A Feminist, Post-Colonial Reading | ||||
| CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education | ||||
| Article 1, Volume 88, Issue 1, October 2024, Page 3-23 PDF (425.95 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/opde.2024.390875 | ||||
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| Author | ||||
| Abeer Mostafa Abdelrazek Elgamal | ||||
| Associate Professor of English Literature Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Education, Mansoura University | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| This paper attempts a feminist, postcolonial reading of The Narrators Told What Shahrazad Did Not Tell, a collection of stories that reimagine traditional folk tales through the voices of modern Egyptian female writers. By reclaiming these narratives, the authors challenge the dominant patriarchal and colonial discourses embedded in classical texts like One Thousand and One Nights. The paper explores how the Women and Memory Foundation, which spearheaded this project, seeks to correct the misconceptions about women's roles in society perpetuated by popular culture and traditional storytelling. Through the re-writing of folk tales from a woman's perspective, these stories create new, empowering representations of women. The analysis also examines how the feminist postcolonial theory is embodied in the texts by deconstructing colonial representations of gender, culture, and power. Focusing on one story as a case study, the paper demonstrates how these narratives subvert established gender roles, offering alternative models of female empowerment. Additionally, the research highlights the collective efforts of the Women and Memory Foundation, including workshops, story-telling events, and exhibitions, which engage diverse audiences in conversations about gender, culture, and identity. Ultimately, this work contributes to the ongoing discourse on reclaiming narrative spaces for marginalized voices. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| The Narrators Told What Shahrazad Did Not Tell; One Thousand and One Nights; Feminism; Postcolonialism; Folk tales; Narrative reclamation | ||||
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