The Feminine Self-Representation of Male Centrism in its Poetic Voice: Abbasid Feminine Poetry Discourse as a Model

Abstract

The dominance of the masculine pattern over the feminine pattern in the real world, amidst the diversity of contexts in societal systems and their variations, reproduces itself, with all its diversity and variation, in textual worlds, through various feminine dimensions – if we may use the term – all branching from the pattern of obedience and submission, and encompassing within it, patterns of stability, conservatism, and acceptance, as many texts in the creative poetic discourse of the poets of the Abbasid era bear witness, with a masculine signature. The textual manifestations of masculine centrism vary within the framework of the larger cultural intertextuality that envelops the texts, and its textual presence oscillates between existential, authoritative, and emotional centralities, guiding the masculine centrism towards the semantic and textual significations upon which the textual construction stands.

The research attempts – based on the aforementioned approach – to approach Abbasid feminine poetic discourse from a critical and cultural perspective, aiming to shed light on the process of textual manifestations of male centrism in that discourse, and the mechanisms through which motifs of male dominance flow towards the structure of textual compositions, which serve as an incubator for a theme representing the central feminine self of male centrism in its poetic text, framing its unique artistic and emotional poetic experience, directing semantic pathways and textual contexts – towards the crystallization of textual male centrism parallel to its non-textual counterpart.