The Iraqi Kurdish Novel, 1970-2011: A Genetic Structuralist Approach

Abstract

Abstract This thesis explores the emergence and development of the Iraqi Kurdish novel between 1970 and 2011, aiming to demonstrate that it engages with political discourses, and that the political situation influenced the themes and structural development of the novel. It will seek to elucidate why, when we examine the history of Kurdish literature over the last fifty years, the first point that may attract our attention is its emergence from the political events. Based on this notion the current study has been divided into three historical phases; 1970-1991, 1991-2003 and 2003-2011. A chapter has been dedicated to each stage, examining two novels from each period, one from the Soranî and one from the Behdînî dialect. Chapter Two discusses the historical background of Iraqi Kurdistan and its influence on the emergence of the novel. Chapter One has been allocated to establishing the methodological background of the textual analysis, which has adopted Lucien Goldmann’s genetic structuralist theory. Such a theory, I will argue, proves helpful in order to discover the link between socio-political conditions and the form of literary works within a society, as Goldmann himself tried to do through his theoretical approach. Chapter Six discusses the results of the study. The thesis demonstrates how the political situation has formed the Iraqi Kurdish novel in terms of both formal and thematic structures, examining the notions of both the ’hero’ and the ‘world vision’ in the novels. It explores the reasons behind the dominant tragic world vision in the first stage, the hopeless worldview in the second, and the self-critical vision in the third phase. In addition, it examines the problematic nature of the hero in the novels, from their emergence until 2011.