Authors:
Mohammad Hamad, Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education, Israel
Mahmoud Kabha, Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education, Israel
Email: hamadm33@gmail.com
Published: July 27, 2020
https://doi.org/10.22492/ijl.9.1.03
Citation: Hamad, M., & Kabha, M. (2020). The System of Gaps and Alerting the Reader in Modern Arabic Literature. IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.22492/ijl.9.1.03
Abstract
This article discusses the system of gaps in modern Arabic literature and how such gaps function to alert readers to specific author intentions and so facilitate the construction of meaning. The system of gaps, this article argues, is fundamental to the process of literary communication between the text and the reader. Literary meanings are produced through a series of gaps that include the title, polyphonic narrative, circularity, ending, fusion between imagination and reality, punctuation, printed form on the page, reading order, linkage, and echoing. This article also studies the contribution of such gaps in making the reader produce the text’s meaning using, as examples, several short-stories, novels, and poetic texts from modern Arabic literature.
Keywords
literary communication theory, reader’s gaps, literary meaning, modern Arabic literature