Acceptance in the novel of the Tasweeni by

Al-Ashkar, Heba

doi:10.21608/aafu.2025.333993.1716

Acceptance in the novel of the Tasweeni by "Maurice Awad"

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Heba Al-Ashkar

Saint Joseph University - Beirut

10.21608/aafu.2025.333993.1716

Abstract

"Al-Tasweeni" is a Lebanese Dialect novel by the Lebanese poet Maurice Awad (1934-2018), . It narrates the story of "Miriam," a young nun whose attitudes, questions, actions, and conditions encapsulate the experiences of the girls from her generation during the Lebanese war.
In this study, we employed the psychoanalytic and social methodologies, in addition to the religious approach, given that the novel itself is filled with fluctuating and contrasting emotions, as if built on a duality of opposites. It presents a struggle oscillating between rejection and acceptance, physically within the convent and intellectually outside it. Like every orphaned girl from the East, Miriam lives in the convent after losing her family and fears society.
It is noteworthy that some dialect terms were introduced in the novel, similar to the works of Naguib Mahfouz, Youssef El Sebai, Tawfiq Al-Hakim, and Ihsan Abdel Quddous. However, we believe that the hidden hands that supported it aimed to use these terms in some dialogues under the pretext of realism, reflecting conversations as they occur in reality. For Maurice Awad, it might be the first novel entirely written in dialect Lebanese.
In this study, we will explore the aspect of "acceptance," a part of the duality of acceptance and rejection in the character of "Miriam," the young nun who lost her family and has only one home left, leading her to resort to monasticism, highlighting the problem of the human being in that miserable era, living an internal dual struggle.

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