Poetic Aspects in Bahaa Tahir's Sharq al-Nakhil

Novelistic criticism often suffers from relating the “meaning” of the novel to the historical reality, without paying due attention to the mechanisms of linguistic condensation or metaphorical constitution of the novel. Bahaa Taher’s first novel Sharq Al-Nakheel (East of the Palm Trees) has received little critical attention, as critics have usually focused on its “meaning” and explored the significance of the earth in it, although the author uses distinguished narrative techniques in this novel. The present paper reads the novel as a campaign against patriarchy at all levels: the home, the village, and the homeland at large.  It tries to explore the techniques that enable us to view the novel as a linguistic configuration, interpret the role of time which condenses its tools (the events of the novel take place in one day only), and highlight the role of temporal convergence between this “day” of the novel and the events that precede it.
The paper applies some mechanisms of the poetics of the novel, such as narrative summary, narrative arrangement, symbolism, metaphor, metaphorical language, and poetics of opposition. As for narrative summary, the novel quickly passes over some historical events and characters without detail, as it is a short and concise novel that focuses on characters and events that are as mysterious and problematic as the “day” of the novel itself.
As for the poetics of arrangement, we studied the role of narrative editing that the author employs with reference to the convergence of events. As far as symbolism is concerned, the palm tree seems to be a symbol of the contrast between the two branches of the same family, and there is also the symbolism of the name “Hussein”.
As for metaphorical language, the dog represents the father, while the horse represents the uncle. We make a historical survey of the traditional opposition between the dog and the horse, and show how the author has taken the side of the new developments in this metaphorical issue.  In the poetics of opposition, we show how Laila in the novel contrasts with her ancestral grandmother in Arabic literary history.